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A STUDY OF TENNYSON, 



I 



A STUDY OF THE WORKS 



ALFRED TENNYSON, D.C.L. 



^oct Uaurtatt. 



EDWARD CAMPBELL TAINSH. 







LONDON: V 
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 

1868. 



T3 



TO 
ALFKED TENNYSON, ESQUIRE, D.C.L., 

|$0£t ^mxzute, 

IN PROFOUND RESPECT FOR 

THE GREATNESS OF HIS GENIUS, 

THE PERFECTNESS OF HIS ART, 

AND HIS FIDELITY TO THE HIGHEST DUTIES 

OF THE POET, 

THIS WORK IS DEDICATED BY 

THE AUTHOE. 



The Essay that closes this volume was written before 
the rest of the work. Though it does not stand in formal 
connexion with the Study, it has with it, none the less, a 
real connexion, and embodies one aspect of the study of 
In Memoriam. 

For the idea of the chronological table at the commence- 
ment of Chapter VIII., and for several other thoughts 
scattered throughout the volume, I am indebted to my 
friend Dr. Eichard Hughes. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEK I. 

Page 
jeneral Principles 11 

CHAPTEK II. 
Classification 32 

CHAPTEK III. 

Melodies. Portraits. Depictures of Single Passions . . 39 

CHAPTER IV. 
. Restorations or Reproductions 56 

CHAPTER V. 
Idylls 83 

CHAPTER VI. 
jamentations 98 

CHAPTER VII. 
1/ Philosophical Poems ,115 

I 



\ 



INTENTS. 

\ iPTER VIII. 

Philosophical Poems — cfr^anued 14 

In Memobiam. 

CHAPTEE IX. 

Philosophical Poems — concluded 215 1 

In Memorial. Verbal Commentary. 

CHAPTER X. 

Poems to Individuals. Laureate Poems. Riddles. Trifles. 

Unclassletable Poems 227 



A Few Days with the Poet Laureate 237 \ 



CHAPTER I. 

GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 

The study of a poet may be directed towards either the art 
forms, or the conceptions, embodied in his works ; towards 
either the beauties of execution and detail by means of 
which he sets forth the truths and lessons he desires to 
exhibit, or towards those truths and lessons themselves. In 
Tennyson, either of these is a rich field. I have chosen 
but one. Upon the strictly art field, I have but touched, 
here and there. My main purpose, throughout, has been 
to bring out the central thought or lesson of each poem 
During my work, the constant discovery of fresh art 
beauties has been a large part of my reward. Of this 
reward, at all events, the reader who consents to accom- 
pany me for a little is not less sure. 

The highest poetry — and indeed, the highest art in 



12 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

general — will within its body of beauty contain a soul of 
truth. The body of beauty is as essential as the soul of 
truth— truth without beauty cannot mate art. The truth 
must be moral truth, or, at lowest, emotional, which is 
akin to moral. With intellectual truth, pure and simple, 
poetry has nothing to do. Intellectual truth of a high 
order will oftentimes be found in a great poem, but it 
will always be in organic connexion with some moral or 
emotional truth. 

A moral truth may be set forth under an abstract or a 
concrete form. The poet has not much to do with the 
abstract ; the concrete is his sphere. The concrete form 
of moral truth is character; the poet's chief concern is 
with character. But there are philosophical poets, and 
these deal with abstract truths. In their hands, symbol 
and metaphor form a garment, if not a body, for the ab- 
stract, and enable it, in some sort, to become concrete. 
The very essence of the poet's relation to truth lies in his 
tendency to give it concrete forms. In this respect, the 
philosopher absolute and the poet absolute, though both, 
by their very nature, truth-seekers, are antipodal; the 
terms poet, philosophical poet, poetical philosopher, and philo- 
sopher might be used to express the gradations of the ten- 
dency which differentiates them. 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 13 

As the poet is not a philosopher, so also he is not a 
moralist. Didactic poetry is almost a contradiction in 
terms. The poet's appeal is rather to the moral sentiments 
than to the conscience direct. Eather by the exhibition, 
than by the prescription, of goodness, he aims to influence 
the character. He desires not that you should listen to a 
sermon, but that, through sympathy with them, you should 
catch the tone of his noble characters, or that, through 
healthy moral indignation, there should be awakened in 
you a keener repugnance to the faults of his baser cha- 
racters. So, though no moralist, his ultimate aim is wholly 
moral, and though he never bids you what to do, the 
direct tendency of his work is always the ennobling of 
your practical life. 

The moral soul of a poem must live within a body of 
beauty. Without beauty there is no art. Over both the 
choice of subjects and their execution, this canon is in- 
flexible. No other consideration in the choice of a subject, 
and no other merit in its execution, can atone for the 
neglect of beauty. Mere accuracy of portraiture is draughts- 
manship, not art. The artist is he who, above all men, 
has an eye for the beautiful, who loves the beautiful, and 
who can embody the beautiful in some art form. To this 
body of beauty the penetrating power of the poet's teaching 



14 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

is due. A poem is more potent than a sermon or an essay 
setting forth the same truth, because, while, in the latter 
the truth still retains, so to say, its solid form, and needs 
to undergo all the processes of mastication and digestion 
before it can be taken up into the system, in the former 
it is dissolved in the nectar of beauty, and woos the lips, 
and permeates the blood with a thrill of pleasure that is 
only known to be more than pleasure from the fact that 
the frame grows strong and puts out its force into worthy 
action under its influence. But if the beauty be wanting, 
the poetic form is but a shell put around the truth, and 
when the shell is broken there is still the mastication and 
digestion of a solid truth to be accomplished. 

There is room for poetry that shall contain no soul of 
moral truth — which shall be but a body of beauty, but which 
yet shall not lie outside tbe region of the educational. All 
beauty, pure and simple, tends to refinement, and all refine- 
ment, pure and simple, to goodness ; and so the poet, or, in 
general, the artist, who but sets forth forms of beauty, may 
yet be aiding the growth of the good. Even so much as 
this is not needed to justify his work ; if he give but pure 
pleasure, his work is far from vain. But it must be rigidly 
demanded of the poet who aims to create a body of beauty 
alone, and who holds back from the attempt to breathe into 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 15 

the body a soul of goodness, that he put no other soul 
therein. All art must be at least negative in relation to 
the moral. He who sends out a coarse or a mean thought 
into the world at all, does ill service to his kind ; but the 
poet who does this plays the part of the devil. For the 
poetic solvent of beauty is not less potent in aiding the 
permeation of the soul by evil than by good. The solid 
coarseness or meanness of prose will tempt none whose 
appetites are not already degraded to its liking ; but beauty 
is nectar whatever be dissolved in it, and the frame may 
be poisoned, unconsciously, or with half-resistance, because 
the mind was too simple, or the will too feeble, to shut the 
lips against the wooing death. In the body of beauty may 
live an angel of light or a devil of darkness, and the poet 
is the magician at whose word the spirit enters. If he 
leave the body untenanted, it is well, for it is a body of 
beauty ; if he beckon in an angel of light, it is noble, and 
he has done well for his kind; if the devil of darkness 
have taken possession at his word, he has earned for his 
name a place on the scroll of the enemies of our race. 

Thus much for the essence of poetry ; concerning the 
form little need be said here. There are at bottom three 
kinds of poetry — Dramatic, Epic, Lyric ; Play, Tale, and 



16 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

Song. Each of these must, of course, have a subject- 
matter ; hut they differ greatly in the degree in which the 
personality of the poet is mingled with the subject-matter. 
In the perfect drama, the poet does not appear at all. He 
places his characters before you, and suffers them to speak 
and act and work out their own destinies, unaffected by 
and uncommented upon by him. Whether they are good 
or bad, whether they speak wisely or foolishly, what 
emotions are the proper response to their destinies — of 
these things he gives you no hint. The drama is before 
you ; judge. It is a bit of the story of life cut out for your 
contemplation, and life has no interpreter. It is not life 
represented or narrated ; it is life. There is no poet. 
You are face to face with humanity. 

This is the perfect idea of the drama. If once the poet 
shows himself, the play, as such, is marred. If you feel 
him selecting, arranging, interpreting or commenting, you 
feel that the dramatic simplicity is gone. You may be 
glad, for you may prefer the poet to his subject ; but that 
is not the point ; the play is no longer a fragment of life, — 
it is a show ; and the poet is showman and commentator. 

The drama is in the present tense ; the epic is in the 
past. In the drama, life is before you ; in the epic, the 
drama has been seen by the poet, and he is telling you the 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES'. 17 

story of what he has seen. Characters, action, plot and 
catastrophe form the elements of both, but they differ in 
tense. There is however another and a deeper difference. 
The perfect drama has no room for the personality of the 
poet ; the epic has. The epic is the union of the subject- 
matter with the personality of the poet. The whole story 
passes through the medium of his mind, and becomes 
coloured by it. You see the characters as he saw them, 
form his judgments, feel his preferences, move with his 
emotions. He is not only narrator, he is interpreter, and 
interpreter not according to the canons of absolute truth, 
but by the key of his own character and sympathies. The 
epic is permeated by the poet ; it is the union of it with 
him. 

The drama shows a stoiy ; the epic tells it ; the lyric 
assumes it to be known, and sings about it. About a story , 
or about a character, an act, or a sentiment, the lyric may 
sing. But in the lyric, still more than in the epic, the 
personality of the poet rises into view. The purpose of the 
poem is to tell how the poet feels about his subject. You 
learn how he feels about his subject in the epic; but the 
epic is not made for the purpose of telling you the poet's 
feelings, but to tell the story. The expression of feeling 
is incidental. But in the lyric the expression of feeling is 

c 



18 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

all. A story or a character falls upon the mind of the poet, 
and sets it in vibration ; the vibration rendered audible is 
a lyric. The subject-matter is essential to set the poet's 
mind moving and to give a direction to that movement, 
but for this only is it necessary. Hence the lyric is, as 
nearly as possible, the expression, pure and simple, of the 
poet's personality. For what a man abstracted from the 
outer life b} r the power of imagination in action feels, that 
he really is. Not a man's thoughts, nor his actions and 
feelings in response to the passing events of life tell his 
essential character. This only is told when, withdrawn 
into the sanctuary of the unseen by the enchantment of the 
imagination, the soul sends up its unrestrained incense of 
worship to that which it esteems as its "highest and 
best. 

These are the great kinds of poetry, and these are some 
of their essential characteristics. Few poets, and, indeed, 
few poems, belong exclusively to either of these kinds, and 
in quite modern poetry the tendency to blend the lines of 
demarcation is especially strong. The lyric is perpetually 
finding for itself a place in the heart of the drama ; the 
ballad is the union of story and song, and man} 7 modern 
poems, though narrative in form, are dramatic in tone. 
But however the kinds may be mingled, the distinctions 



GENEBAL PRINCIPLES. 19 

are real, and every fragment of poetry must have in it the 
quality of the drama, the epic, or the lyric. 

To glance, .next, at the characteristics of Tennyson's 
poetry in relation to the general principles thus laid 
down. 

That the body of beauty is found everywhere throughout 
his writings, there can be small doubt. Of mere sound 
beauty the poems are full ; in metrical beauty and variety 
they are singularly rich ; the very rhymes oftentimes hold 
you in surprise at their abundance and spontaneity. The 
eighteenth canto of Maud and the Ode on the Death of the 
Duke of Wellington display a wealth and beauty of rhyming 
almost unmatched in English poetry. 

In the musical combinations of his words, Tennyson is 
equalled, I think, among English poets, only by Spenser 
and Shelley, unless, indeed, Keats may be added. And, 
over and above its music, there is a certain suggestive 
power about much of our poet's language altogether apart 
from its meaning, which is especially worthy of notice. 
The power comes partly out of the matching of sense by 
sound, but it is not wholly due to this. It is partly this, 
and it is partly the effect of metre, but it is more than 
both. The words seem to bear the same relation to the 



20 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

meaning or sentiment underlying them, that a human 
face does to the underlying heart and mind. The fact 
will make itself felt "by every lover of those poems in 
In Memoriam and Maud especially. 

Tennyson's metrification has been often studied, and 
often praised. Its rich and expressive variety is nowhere 
better seen than in the Maud volume. In Maud itself, each 
change of metre matches, and matches exquisitely, an 
emotional change. And then the symbolism of the metre 
in single verses is oftentimes so wonderful. To take, for 
instance, the second verse cf the fifth canto, and mark how 
the lines grow, as the yearning intensifies, while the re- 
vulsion of feeling caused by the return to the contemplation 
of his own poor life and nipped heart finds expression in 
the broken line that closes the verse. The third verse of 
the sixth canto, again, affords a splendid instance of sym- 
bolic metrification. 

' : And thus a delicate spark 
Of glowing and growing light, 
Through the live-long hours of the dark, 
Kept itself warm in the heart of my dreams 

. Beady to burst in a coloured flame ; 
Till, at last, when the morning came 
In a cloud, it faded, and seems 
But an ashen-gray delight." 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 21 

The steady flow of the words tip to the culmination of 
the long happy fourth line, followed by the broken weary 
movement of the latter part of the verse, expresses perfectly 
the growth of the imaginative happiness during the ideal- 
izing hours of the night and the ultimate triumph of the 
daylight with its cold insistance upon facts, even though 
the words meant nothing. 

The Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington is a great 
study in metrification, though the remarkable suitability 
of the metre of In Memoriam for a poem of which thought 
and subtle distinctions of thought were to be so large and 
important an element is not less the result of an instinct 
true and keen. But upon this and such matters we must 
not dwell, for our chief business is with the soul rather 
than the body of our poet's writings. 

Yet a little more concerning the body must be said. I 
spoke of the vague pictorial power of Tennyson's language. 
A step on from this leads us to the observation of the keen 
flashing power of his words, due to their often presenting, 
instantaneously and vividly, just those qualities in the 
thought or the thing, pertinent to the situation in which 
that thought or thing presents itself. Epithets form the 
crucial test of the poet. Men's nouns and verbs agree 
much more than their adjectives and adverbs. The poet 



22 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

and the poetaster see the same things, and write about the 
same things also. But the poetaster sees only the general 
characteristics of the thing, and to express these the noun 
alone will suffice. But he dare not use the noun alone, 
for in doing so he would reveal to himself and to all men 
that of the true poet's power of seeing he had none. So 
the poetaster is very given to epithets ; but his epithets 
are either such as by immemorial usage are accredited as 
sound and appropriate (only that by their familiarity they 
have lost the power of epithets, and, at best, are not the 
poetaster's any more than they are the reader's), or else 
they are windy, blustering epithets that but cheat the 
poetaster and his weakest readers into the belief that they 
add something to the meaning of the noun about which 
they shake so turbulently. The epithets of the true poet, 
on the other hand, are full of revealing power. All men 
see as much of a thing as the noun expresses. The poet 
sees more, and his epithet reveals the more which he sees. 
The power of seeing this more is perhaps the distinctive 
power of the poet, or, more generally, of the artist. The 
power of learning this " more " from the epithet is perhaps 
the chief and the rarest faculty in the poet's reader. Were 
this faculty less rare, there would be less confounding of 
poets and poetasters. The careful reading of such poems as 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 23 

Godiva, the Gardener's Daughter, or the Morte D' Arthur will 
make clear what is meant by the foregoing remarks. 

In studying Tennyson's epithets, then, we should be 
studying his seeing faculty — his real and personal know- 
ledge of nature and all outer things. Such a study would 
be rich in both teaching and. training — in teaching us what 
the poet has seen for us ; in training us to see for our- 
selves. The power of seeing deeper than the noun 
qualities, so to say, is very rare. The man of science 
teaches us to see deeper ; so also does the poet. But except 
the man of science or the poet be the very highest of his 
order, they teach us to see very different things. The 
mere man of science seeks for appearances indicating 
structure ; the mere poet looks for beauty. But the 
highest man of science sees also with the poet's eyes ; 
the great poet sees with the eyes of the man of science, 
as well as with his poet eyes. He is a great teacher in 
the art of the true observation of nature and all outer 
things. 

Tennyson's sympathy with science is remarkable, and 
colours all his poetry. But it does not cause him to cease 
to be the poet observer. All his seeings are transmuted 
into beauty, or symbol of higher truth. But though, to 
some reader, the beauty and the symbolism were nothing, 



24 A STUDY OF TENXYS.OX. 

none the less, his guidance in the art of observing would 
be invaluable. A friend of mine went through his 
poems, marking all his references to flowers. The study 
was a valuable one, and many similar experiments will 
suggest themselves to the thoughtful reader. The pre- 
cision of our poet's observations is everywhere remarkable, 
and, oftentimes, his most incidental references to natural 
objects are full of point and instruction. He sees, at once, 
with the precision of the man of science and the intensity 
of the poet. I do not attempt to give illustrations, for it 
will make itself apparent to any thoughtful student who 
turns his attention to the matter. 

Possessing an intimate knowledge of nature, Tennyson 
puts his knowledge to a distinctive use. He does not 
make it the subject of his poetry. Everywhere, his poetry 
is about man. Yet everywhere, nature enters largely into 
his poetry. It enters, too, in a close and peculiar con- 
nexion with the human characters which form the subjects 
of the poetry. He does not draw the man, and then draw 
the nature around him ; but he enters into the man, and 
sees nature through his eyes, nature, at the same time, so 
adapting herself to the mood of the man, that her spirit 
and his seem one. This relation I have expressed by the 
name sensuo-sympathetic. There is nothing like it in the 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 25 

.poetry of Wordsworth, or of Shelley, or of Keats. In each 
of these, nature, after one manner or another, masters the 
man. In Keats, she subdues him ; in Shelley, she trans- 
figures him ; in Wordsworth, she is his teacher. But in 
Tennyson, she is one with him. As she presents herself 
to his senses, she is in absolute sympathy with him. His 
pain and fear, his hopes and questionings, are hers. All 
through In Memoriam one feels this. In such poems as 
Mariana and the Lotus Eaters, the spirit of the picture 
would remain the same, though the human beings were 
struck out. In Claribel the picture is made by nature, yet 
it is not a natural but a human situation that is pictured. 
Maud is full of the same sensuo-sympathetic relation between 
man and nature. It is altogether characteristic of Tenny- 
son, and it gives a reality to his similes which otherwise 
they could not have. You feel, not that he is bringing 
together two things that happen to have an external 
resemblance upon some particular point, but that he is 
bringing out a harmony between things the which you 
had not before perceived. In such a simile as 

" She did not weep, 
But o'er her meek eyes came a happy mist, 
Like that which kept the heart of Eden green 
Before the useful trouble of the rain ;" 



26 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

there seems to be something deeper than an accidental 
resemblance. 

In passing on to notice the subjects which Tennyson has 
chosen for his poems, we reach a point where it is hard to 
separate the body of beauty from the soul which it contains. 
Yet, conceivably, the same truths might have been taught, 
and taught poetically, through less beautiful subjects. To 
the setting forth of the lesson of Enid, so exquisite a 
portraiture as that of Enid herself was not essential. 
Were the beauty altogether absent, the truths would not 
be put poet-fashion at all ; but I think it would be hard to 
find more than one or two English poets whose subjects 
are so generally harmonious to the taste and sensibilities, 
and so dear to the heart as those of our laureate. 1 If with 
him, Wordsworth, for instance, be compared, the contrast 
will make itself very distinctly felt. 

Of poetry that is only beauty Tennyson has written very 
little indeed. Some few poems of this order there are, as 
we shall see hereafter, but nearly all these were produced 
quite early in the poet's career. 

Of poems with an evil soul there are none. Vivien is no 
exception to this, as also we shall see hereafter. Every- 
where purity, honour, reverence, shine out through the 
poems. 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 27 

There are many philosophical poems, some of them 
approaching daringly near to the setting forth of purely 
abstract truths. But in every case that garment of con- 
creteness, made up of symbol and metaphor, of which I 
spoke, and an abundant richness of colour and atmosphere 
save the poem from intellectual coldness, and usher it 
through the portals of the head into the holier chambers of 
the heart. 

No poet more fully recognizes his duty as a teacher than 
Tennyson, but no poet is less explicitly didactic. He 
remembers that he is an artist, not a divine, a poet, not a 
moralist. So his moral teachings are rendered in the con- 
crete not in the abstract form, and shine out from his 
characters rather than are uttered by or for them. To 
present a human character radiant with moral beauty — that 
is his way of preaching a poet-sermon. But this matter is 
the subject of our study; more, therefore, need not be said 
upon it in this place. 

Turning now to the subject of poetic form, it strikes us 
at once that the dramatic, the epic, and the lyric tendencies 
are all largely represented in Tennyson's mind — the epic, 
nevertheless, least so. This last, notwithstanding he has 
written no play, and scarcely a dramatic fragment, and 
very few pure lyrics, while in narrative poems his works 



28 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

abound. But his personality is so intensely present in 
many of his narrative poems that the feeling of them is 
altogether lyric ; while in others he so succeeds in pro- 
jecting himself into and embodying the characters of 
the poems that they have the vividness and presentness of 
dramatic characters. 

It would be very interesting to study Tennyson's poems 
after the three following cues. (1) Starting from purely 
narrative poems, to form a series in which the lyrical 
spirit more and more pervades the narrative ; (2) To 
trace the gradations between the narrative and the dramatic 
forms; (3) To observe the encroachments of the lyric 
upon the dramatic. It would be beside my purpose to 
attempt this study here, but I may be permitted to give an 
illustration or two of what I mean. Taking (2) for the 
purpose, we have, — 

First. Purely narrative poems, such as Dora, Enoch Arden, 
and the^Idylls of the King, in which the whole 
story is in the past tense, and the narrator, the 
poet himself, has no relation to the story. 

Second. Poems in which a narrator is introduced to tell 
the story, he having no further relation to that 
story than that it has come into his knowledge. 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 29 

The Morte If Arthur and Aylmers Field are some- 
what imperfect examples of this step. 

Tliird. Poems in which the speaker is one of the charac- 
ters of the story, the other characters being 
supposed absent, and the narrative still being in 
the past. The Princess, the Two Voices, and 
LocJcsley Hall are examples of this. There will 
generally be a strong lyric tendency about this 
class of poems, the speaker's present feelings 
perpetually colouring, and, for the moment, 
frequently overriding his story. This is very 
apparent in LocJcsley Hall. Also in poems of 
this class, there is very often an audience sup- 
posed to be present and addressed, like the 
mother in the May Queen. 

Fourth. Poems in which the speaker is one of the charac- 
ters in the story, the other character or characters 
being present and addressed, the narrative still 
being in the past. Here the lyric tendency is 
also strong. The Miller s Daughter illustrates 
this kind. 

Fifth. Poems in which the speaker is one of the charac- 
ters of the story, the narrative being always in 
the present tense, because, at each advance in 



A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

the story, the speaker shifts his position, so to 
say, and adjusts himself to the present, or rather 
(for that is the true notion of the poem), the 
utterances occur as the story advances. In this 
case, the other characters will be absent ; I 
know of no case in which they are supposed to 
be present. Maud and In Memoriam are the 
highest examples of this class, though in neither 
of these is there an absolute adherence to the 
immediate present : at several points the speaker 
seems to advance a step and look back over the 
short space he has just traversed. All poems of 
this kind will be intensely lyrical, because the 
speaker is under the glow of present feeling, and 
is not curbed in the utterance of that feeling 
by such limitations as the presence of other 
speaking characters would necessarily impose. . 
Hence Maud is at the same time the most 
dramatic and the most lyrical of all Tennyson's 
poems. 
Sixth. Dramatic poems, in which there is no narrative at 
all, but each character stands upon his own feet 
as in an ordinary play. Walking to the Mail 
humbly illustrates this step. 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 31 

In these six steps we have a regular gradation from the 
pure narrative to the pure dramatic form. It must be con- 
fessed that the climax is somewhat of a collapse. Tenny- 
son has a strong dramatic tendency, but he has no tendency 
to write plays. This is because of his also strong lyric 
tendency. He loves to project himself into other and very 
different characters; but then he loves to sing through 
them, or at least to make them sing. He consents to 
become objective, that his characters may become subjective. 
But this is not the pure dramatic spirit. In the perfect 
play, not only the poet lives in his characters, but they 
live in each other. If the poet forgets his characters, and 
begins to utter himself, or if the characters forget each 
other, and begin simply to utter themselves, the drama is 
at an end. Tennyson does not usually do the former, but 
his -characters are very apt to do the latter, or rather 
would do the latter were he not wise enough to place them 
in what I may call lyrical situations. I should say that 
Tennyson is a lyric poet, singing with many voices by 
virtue of the dramatic power through which he is able to 
project himself into many and diverse characters. 

Thus much (very brief and imperfect as it is) must suffice 
for our general comment upon the spirit and character of 
our Laureate's writings. 



A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 



CHAPTER II. 

CLASSIFICATION. 

Bearing in mind the principles laid down, and the 
characteristics of our poet, indicated in the last chapter, 
but not feeling ourselves bound by the lines of demarca- 
tion suggested by those principles and characteristics, we 
proceed to a general classification of all the poems that 
have as yet come to us from our Laureate's hand.* This 
classification will have little relation to outer form, being 
based rather upon the intellectual and moral aims manifest 



* As a matter of fact, not quite all the Laureate's published 
are here treated of. Some that appeared in his earlier publications 
have been withdrawn from the later editions of those publications, and 
some few that he has suffered to appear in magazines or newspapers he 
has not seen fit to republish in any permanent form. I think that I am 
right to take the poet's works as he chooses them to stand, and to 
abstain from disinterring what it has been his pleasure to bury. 



CLASSIFICATION. ?,?> 

in the poems. A very interesting classification might also 
be made upon the basis of form, but, in pursuit of our pre- 
sent purpose, what we have already suggested in that 
direction will suffice. 

The classification is as follows : — 

Gkoup I. Melodies. 
Claribel. 
The Owl, 1. 
The Owl, 2. 
Song (Page 31). 
The Sea Fairies. 
The Dying Swan. 
The Merman. 
The Mermaid. 
The Poet's Song. 
The Eagle. 

Move Eastward (Page 377). 
The Islet (Enoch Arden volume). 

Group II. Portraits. 

Lilian. 

Isabel. 

Madeline. 

Adeline. 

A Character. 

Eleanore. 

Margaret. 



A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

Group II. — continued. 

The May Queen. 

The Northern Farmer (Enoch Arden). 

The Grandmother (Enoch Arden). 

Geoup III. Depictures of Single Passions or Sentiments. 



Mariana in the South. 

Oriana. 

Fatima. 

The Sisters. 

The Deserted House. 

A Dirge. 

Circumstance. 

Edward Gray. 

Love and Duty. 

A Farewell. 

Break (Page 378). 

Come not when I am dead (Page 376). 

Eequiescat (Enoch Arden). 

In the Valley of Cauteretz (Enoch Arden). 

The Letters (Maud). 

Geoup IV. Restorations or Reproductions. 

(a.) Miscellaneous. 
Eecollections of the Arabian Nights. 
A Dream of Fair Women. 
Godiva. 



" CLASSIFICATION. 

Group IV. — continued. 

St. Simeon Stylites. 
St. Agnes' Eve. 
(b.) Arthurian. 
The Lady of Shallot. 
Morte D Arthur. 
Sir Galahad. 

Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. 
Idylls of the King. 
(c.) Classic. 
The Lotus Eaters. 



QEnone. 
Utysses. 
Tithonus (Enoch Arden). 

Group V. Idylls. 

The Miller's Daughter. 

The Gardener's Daughter. 

Dora. 

Edwin Morris. 

The Talking Oak. 

Lady Clare. 

Lord of Burleigh. 

The Beggar Maid. 

The Brook (Maud). 

The Daisy (Maud). 

Enoch Arden. 

Sea Dreams (Enoch Arden). 



A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

y Group VI. Lamentations. 
Locksley Hall. 
Lady Clara Vere de Vere. 
Aylmer's Field. 
Maud (Though under one of its aspects only) 

J Group VII. Philosophical Poems. 

Maud (Under another of its aspects). 

The Princess. 

" You ask me why, though ill at ease." 

" Of old sat freedom on the heights." 

" Love thou thy land, with love far-brought." 

The Poet. ./ 

The Poet's Mind. 

Love and Death. 

The Golden Year. 

The Palace of Art. 

The Two Voices. 

The Vision of Sin. 

Will (Maud), i/ 

In Memoriam. 

Group VIII. Poems to Individuals. 
To — (Page 13). 
To J. M. K. 

To J. S. 

To — (Page 350). 

ToE. L 

To the < 



CLMSIFICA TION. 

Group VIII. — continued. 

To the Kev. F. D. Maurice (Maud). 
To his wife (Enoch Arden). 

Group IX. Laureate Poems. 

Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (Maud). 
The Charge of the Light Brigade (Maud). 
Alexandra (Enoch Arden). 
Dedication to Prince Albert (Idylls). 

Group X. Biddies. < 

The Day Dream. 

The Voyage (Enoch Arden). 
The Flower (Enoch Arden). 
The Islet (Enoch Arden). 



Group XI. Trifles. 

The Blackbird. 

The Goose. 

Audley Court. 

Walking to the Mail. 

Amphion. 

Will Waterproofs Monologue. 

The Sailor Boy (Enoch Arden). 

The Einglet (Enoch Arden). 



3S A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

Group XII. Unclassifiable Poems. 
Ode to Memory. 

Ode on the Death of the Old Year. 
Experiments (Enoch Arden) . 

I need not give here the justification of the titles by 
which I have headed these groups, as this is in many 
cases self-evident, and, where it is otherwise, it will appear 
in the course of the commentary following. 



CHAPTER III. 

MELODIES. PORTRAITS. DEPICTURES OF SINGLE 

PASSIONS. 

Tennyson's earliest formal publication, which, with some 
alterations, forms the first part of the volume entitled 
" Poems," is remarkable for the modesty of its attempts. 
There is not one ambitions poem. He writes as a man pre- 
paring his implements, and striving to render himself skilful 
in their use. He consciously puts himself through a regular 
apprenticeship to his art. Word-music, nature-reading, 
and the depicting of character, are the fundamentals of the 
poetic art, and to these he devotes himself, and to the skill 
lie has acquired in these, his first publication bears witness. 
It consists almost entirely of members of my first three 



40 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

groups, and, conversely, the greater number of the members 
of these groups are found in this first publication. 
The poems which I have called Melodies, namely — 

Claribel. The Merman. 

The Owl, 1. ' The Mermaid. 
The Owl, 2. The Poet's Song. 

Song (Page 31). The Eagle. 

The Sea Fairies. Move Eastward. 

The Dying Swan. The Islet. 

are those in which the production of word-music is the 
chief aim. Some of these are full of music. Claribel is 
perfect. It does not mean much ; it would not matter if 
it meant nothing. The tongue loves to utter the words, 
and the ear rejoices to hear them; and so it is a melody. 
But yet it is more than a melody ; it foreshadows that 
careful and minute study of nature for which Tennyson is 
so remarkable, and also his power of producing natural 
pictures in harmony with the mood of the poem.- This is 
a matter of which 1 have already spoken, calling it our 
poet's sensuo-sympathetic use of nature. He has written 
no " Skylark " or " Sensitive Plant ;" some human character 
is always the centre of his picture, and nature is used to 
aid in intensifying the portraiture of this character or its 
moods. 



MELODIES, PORTRAITS, 8,-c. 41 

In word-music, it is doubtless true that many of his 
later poems are quite as rich, while, in them, his attention 
is concentrated upon the thought, and the music comes 
altogether spontaneously. But this will only happen to one 
who has trained his ear to a critical sensitiveness to the 
music in words. Of course, I do not mean that any amount 
of ear-culture will make a poet, or even a musical writer. 
Even in this lower sense, the poet is born, not made. But 
the intensest natural sense of beauty — whether of colour, 
or form, or sound, or imagery, or thought — needs culture, 
and the poet who neglects thus to train his ear is as unfair 
to his genius, as a painter would be who did not study 
drawing and the harmony of colours. But the culture 
once accomplished, and the poet's true work entered upon, 
the music will take care of itself. 

There are one or two other poems that I was tempted to 
put among the Melodies ; chief of them are the Lotus Eaters 
and Oriana. They belong elsewhere; but it is manifest 
that the poet thought much of and revelled in their sound 
as he wrote them. Oriana must be read aloud, or heard, 
to be at all fully enjoyed ; and in reading it aloud there is 
a peculiar tolling effect to be got by the almost monotonous 
intonation of the word "Oriana," while a peculiar length 
and force is given to the broad a in the middle of the word. 



42 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

The Portraits of Single Characters are — 

Lilian. Eleanore. 

Isabel. Margaret. 

Madeline. The May Queen. 

Adeline. The Northern Farmer. 

A Character. The Grandmother. 

Most of these are the first etchings of a young artist. 
They are vivid enough. Take three of them— Isabel, 
Adeline, and Margaret - and feel how distinctive they are. 
Isabel, with her still, calm eyes, that look full into yours 
in transparent dignity and simplicity ; a woman to rever- 
ence, if she were your mother ; to be your second conscience 
and judgment, if she were your wife ; in whose presence 
coarseness and flippancy could not live : — 

" Revered Isabel, the crown and head, 
The stately flower of female fortitude, 
Of perfect wifehood and pure lowlihead." 

Adeline, who would haunt you for weeks if you had seen 
her but once, but whom you could not describe ; in whose 
presence you talk strange, musical talk, uncommon to your 
ordinary life ; who looks through you, but never sees you, 
rather seeking, as it seems, for the soul within you, and 
indeed revealing to yourself a spirit within you that 



MELODIES, PORTRAITS, $c. 43 

you were not conscious of; a woman to die and leave behind 
her a sweet fragrance of tender and yearning memories. 

Margaret, a woman to live and to hear words of love spoken 
to her, and by this sign differing from Adeline. 

" You move not in such solitudes, 
You are not less divine, 
But more human in your moods 
Than your twin sister Adeline." 

It has been said that these earlier portraits of Tennyson's 
are rather models than real human figures ; that, while 
so very like men and women, they have no true breath in 
them. This, if true, would be a serious charge against 
even the youngest poet. It is the poetaster, not the poet, 
who makes models, and calls them men. But it is not true. 
To call Lilian, for instance, a model, a lay figure, is absurd. 
What is true, is this. Lilian is a type, not an individual, 
an abstract not a concrete portrait. But this only arises 
from the fact that no story is attached to her. She is real 
humanity, and not a model, inasmuch as her portraiture 
is the result of a real and intimate knowledge of human 
nature, not the setting down of vague general notions, as 
would be the case with the model of the poetaster. Isabel, 
Madeline and Adeline need but a fragment of story attached 
to them to make them live and breathe before you. 



44- A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

The May Queen, the Northern Farmer, and the Grand- 
mother are portraits of another stamp. Those others are 
true to nature, but they have stepped forward from the 
ideal world, nevertheless ; are scarcely flesh and blood 
inhabitants of this world : these are portraits from actual 
life, one of them being strongly drawn enough. The 
difference not unaptly illustrates two stages of a poet's 
history. In the first stage he lives with the outer world 
of nature, but with the inner, the ideal world of man. 
Later, men, as they are, become the subjects of his most 
constant study, and of his highest interest. Not tbat in 
this new stage he has forsaken the ideal ; but because he 
hopes the ideal to be a possible actual, he is for ever bring- 
ing actual men to measurement with the ideal standard, 
and for ever bringing the ideal standard before the eyes 
and affections of men. The poet who, in his youth, has 
not lived with the ideal, until that has come to seem 
to him the only true manhood, can be no worthy leader 
of men. 

I caunot refrain from here setting down a dainty morsel 
of appreciative criticism upon the May Queen, offered by a 
young girl-friend of mine. In the first part of the poem, 
the child, in her high-spirited, half-wayward mood, says 
" You must wake and call me early ;" but when illness has 



MELODIES, PORTE AITS, #c. 45 

taken her, and the approach of death makes her meek, her 
words change to " If you're waking call me early." 

Apropos of my girl-friend's criticism and of a certain 
aspect of criticism in general. I should he told hy many, 
" Yes, that is all very well and very pretty, hut it is a 
difference that the poet did not intend, and did not see. 
The detection of such shades of meaning is generally more 
ingenious than true. Not only Shakspeare, but every poet is 
made, by his lovers and commentators, to mean much more 
than ever entered his own mind." This general statement 
has of course much truth in it ; hut the truth is only of 
a corrective sort. There is much truth on the other side, 
too. The minute and loving study of a poet may result 
in the invention for him of meanings that he never had ; 
but, much more, it will result in the discovery of meanings 
that he did have. The superficial student does not less 
plant false meanings upon his author ; and he, for certain, 
misses all the deeper meanings. And there is another side 
to the matter, which can best be approached by taking up 
the special morsel of criticism which led to this digression. 
I would say to the supposed objector, " Do you grant that 
these two forms of expression are natural to the two states 
of mind in which the May Queen child is pictured ? Then 
the poet may have intended the coincidence of feeling and 



40 .-1 STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

expression? But, if not, do yon speak to a happy man 
and a sad one, to a man and a woman, to a person who 
suits you and one who does not, to a grown person and a 
child, in the same tone and under the same forms of 
speech ? Do you, by deliberate intention, vary your tone 
and forms of speech, in these cases ? If you do, you are 
mouthing ; but if you are a perfectly natural and simple 
person, you do not, as you know. Yet are not your various 
forms of speech the proper expression of your various 
states of mind and feeling, and would not the observation 
of the coincidence between these variations be an observa- 
tion of a radically natural and not of an accidental coin- 
cidence ? Finally, are not you, in a deep sense, though not 
consciously, the author of this adaptation of expression to 
sentiment ?" So it is with the poet. It is true that he 
does not stand outside his characters and deliberately and 
mechanically adapt the outer to the inner — expression to 
feeling. Instead, he lives in his characters — for the time 
being becomes his characters — thinks their thoughts, feels 
their feelings, and expresses himself with their expression ; 
and therefore as, in a sensitive nature, every varying shade 
of thought and feeling is matched by some corresponding 
touch of change in the manifestation, the changes them- 
selves, much more their coincidence, being half unknown 



MELODIES, PORTRAITS, $c. 47 

to their subject ; so, in the poet's characters, the adaptation 
of expression to sentiment will be perfect, not by accident, 
nor by design, but by nature, because the poet and his 
character have, for the time being, become one. And the 
detection of these shades of coincidence is the discover}', 
not of his accidents, nor of his art, but of his poethood ; 
and though he should be unaware of the touches of nature 
that had surprised and rejoiced you, none the less they 
might be the fruit and the soul of his genius. 

To resume. I may venture a remark here upon the 
poem A Character. It is, I conceive, the weakest of the 
portraits ; and it is so because the poet has no point of 
sympathy with the character he has drawn. Tennyson 
has drawn sinful men and women with a masterly hand 
(as Lancelot and Guinevere) ; but, in all that he has so 
drawn, there are touches of nobility that make them not 
altogether unlovable. Whenever he attempts a character 
that he wholly dislikes, he fails, as I think. The brother 
in Maud, the parents in Aylmers Field, the curate in Edwin 
Morris, and the hypocrite in Sea Breams are examples of 
this. He cannot stand outside such characters, and look 
at thera with a mere artist's eye ; his moral repulsion shows 
through his work and makes the drawing coarse. One dop^ 



48 A STUDY OF TENNTSOA 7 . 

not love him the less for this ; hut, as far as artistic power 
is concerned, it is a defect. Shakspeare was not thus, 
nor is any great pure objective poet ; hut then objective 
poets do not gain the strong personal love of their readers. 

We turn next to the Depictures of Single Passions or Senti- 
ments. These are — 

Mariana. Edward Gray. 

Mariana in" the South. Love and Duty. 

Oriana. A farewell. 

Fatima. " Break, break, break." 

The Sisters. "Come not when I am dead. 

The Deserted House. Kequiescat. 

A Dirge. In the Valley of Cauteretz. 

Circumstance. The Letters. 

Here we have a pretty full passage through the gamut 
of human feelings. First there is the dreary, weary lone- 
liness of Mariana. In the death of hope, and the dead dis- 
appointment of love and trust, she lives, and tears and her 
unchanging complaint are her only occupation. 

' ' Her tears fell with the dews at even ; 
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried ; 
She could not look on the sweet heaven, 
Either at morn or eventide." 

Everything reminds her of her sorrow, and life and day 



MELODIES, PORTRAITS, 4c 49 

and night are all saturated with dreariness. There is no 
redeeming touch ; the desolation is absolute. Its absolute- 
ness is intensified fourfold by the fact that it is hopeless 
and purposeless. He does not come, and her sorrow bears 
no fruit in the woman's life and character. But this 
omission is no oversight. It was intended that the picture 
should be absolute. It is a work of art, in the narrowest 
sense of the term. The poet is still in his apprenticeship. 

There is no better example of our poet's sensuo-sympa- 
thetic use of nature than this poem affords. The mood of 
the whole picture is absolutely identical with that of the 
woman herself. Indeed, if the woman were withdrawn 
from the poem altogether, there would be left a picture 
expressing in fainter colours, the same sentiment as before. 
Every detail tells, and the poplar upon the gloomy flats 
is the very symbol of her life and feelings. At last, 
weary of weariness, she vanishes in a passion of grief; 

" Oh, God, that I were dead !" 

Mariana in the South is another picture of the same 
blighted love and loneliness ; but how different it becomes 
by the southern breath that blows through it. The scenery 
is the rich nature of the south; the woman an Italian 
woman, passionately conscious of her own slighted beauty, 



50 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

chafing at her desertion, bringing back the past to her 
memory and dwelling upon the false letters, and, mistaking 
passion for religion, crying ever to the Madonna to help 
her. And then while the calmer Mariana but prays for 
death, in the extremity of her grief, npon the more turbu- 
lent sorrow of her southern sister the vision of the great 
peace falls. 

" At eve a dry cicala sung, 

There came a sound as of the sea ; 
Backward the lattice-blind she flung, 

And leaned upon the balcony. 
There all in spaces rosy-bright 

Large Hesper glittered on her tears, 

And deepening through the silent spheres, 
Heaven over Heaven rose the night. 
And weeping then she made her moan, 

' The night comes on that knows not morn, 
When I shall cease to be all alone, 

To live forgotten and love forlorn.' " 

Oriana deepens into a still intenser passion. Despair 
and self-reproach take the place of desolation and wounded 
love. To the Marianas, the present pain is aggravated by 
the memory of past happiness ; but in Oriana the bitterness 
comes out of the fact that by his own hand the happiness 
had been brought to an^end, and his loved one to her death. 



MELODIES, PORTRAITS, fo. 51 

For a moment, the tender happiness of the past comes back 
as he says, 

" While blissful tears blinded my sight 
I to thee my troth did plight ;'' 

but then the agony sweeps across his heart, as he raves, 

" The bitter arrow went aside, 
The false, false arrow went aside ;" 

and then with set teeth he moans, 

" They should have stabbed me where I lay." 

The passion changes, and he melts in pity for the dear 
slain one, and for his own sad fate ; 

" O breaking heart that will not break ! 
O pale, pale face, so sweet and meek !" 

But even this may not abide, for his grief and remorse 
harden him, and shut out heaven ; 

" Thou comest atween me and the skies." 

And all through the wonderful picture, " Oriana " tolls its 
dirge-note, while the intense melancholy of the line 

" I hear the roaring of the sea " 

ends the poem and rings on in your ears. 

Deeper and deeper still we descend to the bitter revenge 



52 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

of Tlie Sisters. I know no other so weird a picture. The 
self-justifying revenge in the words, 

"Therefore revenge became me well ;" 



" I hated him with the hate of hell, 
But I loved his beauty passing well ;'' 

the treble stabbing, and the care for and admiration of the 
murdered body ; 

" I curled and combed his comely head, 
He looked so grand when he was dead ;" 

with the final ingenuity of cruelty which could suggest, 

" I wrapt his body in the sheet 
And laid him at his mother's feet ;" 

make tip a picture of bitter and unmatched weirdness. 
Nor should one fail to notice the effect of the last line of 
each verse, and of the thoughtful variations in the constant 
but changing third line also. The return to the calmer 
word "blowing" in the last verse is a morsel of delicate art. 
In contrast with these pictures of the bitterer and more 
passionate emotions, stand those four exquisitely tender 
and haunting whispers of sorrow and farewell which 
follow. I mean, A Farewell; Break, break, break ; Bequiescat ; 



MELODIES, PORTRAITS, &c. 53 

and In tlie Valley of Cauteretz. The feeling of them all is 
strangely similar. In each picture there is water, in har- 
mony with the sentiment, or in contrast, or in dim, 
shadowy sympathy. In the Farewell, the continuity of the 
rivulet's movements, and of all that befalls it, throws into 
contrast the fleeting life of man. In the Valley of Cauteretz, 
the voice of the stream calls back the voice long since 
heard in company with it. In the Bequiescat is a dainty 
side-glance at the old likeness of life to a river. In 
Break, break, break, the sea stands for nothing specific, but 
by its perpetual murmur on the shore attunes the soul to 
the keynote of sorrow, and preaches the relation of suffer- 
ing to the infinite. And in them ail, grief seems holier ; 
for be it the child-voice of the rivulet, or the ancient tones 
of the sorrowful sea, self-will and lowness cannot live in 
this contact, and the soul is soothed to calmness and resig- 
nation by the lullaby of the great mother. 

Love and Duty is a poem of wonderful power, and stands 
on the threshold of the Philosophical Group. There 
is nowhere intenser poetry throughout the whole range 
of our poet's writings, nor anywhere a larger proportion 
of noble lines that are able to stand alone, and testify 
themselves the offspring of a great poet's genius. And, 
though very sad, it is healthy and high-toned — in striking 



54 A STUDY OF TENNYSON, 

contrast with so much of our literature at the present 
monaeut. Our women novelists have done us one ill- 
service. Feeling that, oftentimes, love is trodden under 
the feet of conventional requirements and hampered by 
unnatural limitations, they have rebelled, arid have de- 
clared that love is the true lord of these its tyrants. So 
far they are right. But they have gone further, and have, 
in some of the most popular novels of the day, declared 
that love is lord of all — not only of conventionality, but of 
duty. The intense sympathy of several living and lately 
dead women novelists with love that has broken through 
all limitations and defied all law is too obvious to have 
escaped the notice of thoughtful readers. It is, perhaps, 
a natural result of previous injustice, but it is none the 
less wrong and injurious. In the true part of their protest, 
Tennyson is with them. Witness " Locksley Hall " and 
" Aylmer's Field." "When their protest becomes a rebellion 
against duty, he is no longer with them. But it is so 
common for those who urge the claims of duty to ignore 
the potency of love. This is as unwise as it is disin- 
genuous. No enemy was ever conquered by being under- 
rated ; no man was ever helped in the performance of a 
difficult duty by the pretence that that duty was not diffi- 
cult at all. The truth and the value of this poem lie in the 



MELODIES, PORTE AITS, #c. 55 

fact that it is a picture of deep and passionate love bowing 
before the majesty of duty, and even so, not despairing of 
life, but boping for the high fruit of wisdom and peace. 

" But am I not the nobler through thy love ? 
O three times less unworthy. Likewise thou 
Art more through Love, and greater than thy years. 
The Sun will ran his orbit, and the Moon 
Her circle. "Wait, and Love himself will bring 
The drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruit 
Of wisdom. "Wait : my faith is large in Time, 
And that which shapes it to some perfect end." 



56 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 



CHAPTER IV. 

RESTORATIONS OR REPRODUCTIONS. 

The poems that I have brought together in this group are 
upon subjects old to literature, and, for the most part, to 
poetry, but here restored, or reproduced, by the living 
poet. Indeed, they might, in many cases, be called trans- 
lations, rather than reproductions. But the translation 
is one of spirit, not of language or form. The thought of 
the old poem is translated into another key. Yet the 
thought is not modernized ; it is rather universalized. 
The men of the old times do not become men of modern 
times ; they become men of all times. Arthur remains 
the true model of knightly chivalry ; but it is the knightly 
chivalry possible to all ages, and underlying all the acci- 
dental changes of custom and form. In many of his poems, 
Tennyson teaches lessons distinctively proper to our own 



RESTORATIONS. 57 

time ; in these reproductions he sets forth great lessons 
common to all time, and important to us only because they 
are always important to all. 

The group breaks into three divisions : — 

(a.) Miscellaneous. 
Eecollections of the Arabian Nights. 
A Dream of Fair "Women. 
Godiva. 

St. Simeon Stylites. 
St. Agnes' Eve. 

(b.) Arthurian. 

The Lady of Shalott. 

Morte D Arthur. 

Sir Galahad. 

Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. 

Idylls of the King. 

(c.) Classic. 

The Lotus Eaters. 
GEnone. 



Tithonus. 

The Arabian Nights is interesting as foreshadowing the 
power of detailed description, vivid and very pictorial, 
which shows itself fully in the Palace of Art. In the 
Dream of Fair Women, the same power is manifest, blended 



58 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

with the exquisite portrait-drawing that makes up the 
greater part of the poem. Then, after the sweetly- told 
Godiva, come those two powerful reproductions of the harsh 
and the tender sides of the old monastic spirit. St. Simeon 
Stylites and St. Agnes' Eve are great studies, very helpful 
towards the understanding of the mediaeval religious spirit. 
They are not only the two poles of the spirit, they are its 
two sexes, also. There could have been no woman Stylites ; 
there could hardly have been a man St. Agnes. The in- 
tense self consciousness of the one, and the utter self-for- 
getfulness, rising into rapture, of the other, are the two 
extremes and the two sexes of that spirit which separates 
the religious life from the active life, and finds in the 
sacrifice of the natural emotions the best service of God. 
St. Simeon is not very poetical ; it is too self-conscious and 
searchingly analytic for that, and the subject is too painful, 
also. To take, for instance, such a passage as — 

" O Jesus, if thou wilt not save rny soul, 
Who may be saved ? Who is it may be saved ? 
Who may be made a saint, if I fail here ? 
Show me the man hath suffered more than I. 
For did not all Thy martyrs die one death? 
****** 

But I die here, 
To-day, and whole long years, a life of death." 



RESTORATIONS. 59 

And, again, 

" Bethink Thee, Lord, while Thou and all the saints 
Enjoy themselves in heaven, and men on earth 
House in the shade of comfortable roofs, 
Sit with their wives by fires, eat wholesome food, 
And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls, 
I, 'tween the spring and downfall of the light 
Bow down one thousand and two hundred times 
To Christ, the Virgin-mother, and the saints ; 
Or, in the night, after a little sleep 
I wake : the chill stars sparkle, I am wet 
With drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost." 

St. Agnes' Eve, on the other hand, is altogether poetical 
and beautiful, even though less remarkable as a study. It 
would not be easy to overmatch the stanzas, 

" He lifts me to the golden doors ; 

The flashes come and go ; 
All heaven bursts her starry floors, 

And strews her light below, 
And deepens on and up ! the gates 

Roll back, and far within 
For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits 

To make me pure of sin. 
The Sabbaths of Eternity, 

One Sabbath deep and wide — 
A light upon the shining sea — 

The Bridegroom with his bride." 



60 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

In the Arthurian restorations, Tennyson enters upon 
what we have learned to consider his own .special and 
peculiar ground. Many poets, since it was first created, 
have made that great romance their theme ; hut, at best, 
they have but retold the story, while Tennyson seems to 
have discovered and laid bare the true meaning that was 
hidden under the crudities, and, oftentimes, the coarseness 
of the old romancers. It was the ideal of chivalry that 
the Arthurian Epic desired to exhibit ; but it is so difficult 
for men to separate the accidents and faults of their own 
age from its true glory, that the ideal picture of the old 
poets is defaced by many a blemish. Later writers have, 
as I say, but retold the story, oftentimes forgetting the 
central thought of the romance altogether. But, to Tenny- 
son, the ideal Arthur stands out clear and lifelike, and 
before us he breathes for the first time in the fulness of his 
beauty. And in the light of his nobility, all the other 
characters range themselves in well-marked moral grada- 
tion, and, removed alike from the narrow lower standards 
of judgment of that time and of this, are stamped by the 
measure of the essential right. Tennyson himself seems 
to have arrived at this perception of the inner meaning of 
the romance only gradually, for while it is most apparent 
in Sir Galahad and Morte D' Arthur it is altogether absent 



RESTORATIONS. 61 

in The Lady of Shalott and Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. 
The Ldylls glow with it. 

Sir Galahad is a noble picture of a religious knight. 
He is almost as much a mystic as a soldier ; both a monk 
and a warrior of the ideal type. He foregoes the world as 
much as if he lived within the monastery walls, and 
esteems his sword as sacred to the service of God as if it- 
were a cross. His rapture is altogether that of the mystic. 
He is almost a St. Agnes, exchanging only the rapture of 
passivity for the transport of exultant effort. Yet there is 
something of the self-consciousness of Stylites about him, 
too. He is just the embodiment of the noblest and the 
strongest tendencies of the chivalric age. 

" The clouds are broken in the sky, 

And through the mountain walls, 
A rolling organ-harmony 

Swells up and shakes and falls. 
Then move the trees, the copses nod, 

Wings nutter, voices hover clear : 
' O just and faithful knight of God ! 

Eide on ! the prize is near.' 
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange, 

By bridge and ford, by park and pale, 
All armed I ride, whate'er betide, 

Until I find the holy Grail." 

The Morte D' Arthur is the only poem Tennyson has 



62 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

written directly upon Arthur, though the king haunts the 
Idylls everywhere, and gives them their prevailing tone. 
It would he pleasant to have another series of Idylls about 
the king himself, with the Morte D 'Arthur as the last of the 
series. The detailed beauties of the Morte D 'Arthur are 
many and great ; but it is not within my purpose to dwell 
upon them, and that which I have to say upon the por- 
traiture of King Arthur will best fall into the comment 
herewith following upon the " Idylls of the King." 

The Idylls, as I conceive, have a double aim. They are 
four fragments from the great Arthurian picture, and they 
also set forth four leading types of womanhood. I should 
think that the poet was conscious of both these aims, 
though I should think, too, that the second arose inci- 
dentally out of the study of the individual women as they 
appear in the old romance. The true artist commences 
always by realizing and endeavouring to depict the con- 
crete, the individual, rising unconsciously, at first, and, at 
last, perhaps, scarcely consciously, to the abstract, the 
universal. To set out with the conception of four great 
phases of womanhood, and then to create or to select four 
individual women to illustrate those phases — that would 
not be the method of the true artist. The women are real, 
breathing women, not models to illustrate the philosophy 



RESTORATIONS. 63 

of womanhood. Belli nd the four women stand the two 
men, Arthur and Lancelot. There are other men in the 
Idylls, but they stand for nothing special. Even Geraint 
is important only as provoking the exhibition of Enid's 
sweetness and womanly strength. But Arthur and Lance- 
lot are great figures, scarcely less marked that they stand 
in the background. 

Concerning the Idylls as a reproduction of the Arthurian 
Eomance, there is need to say but little. It is a true 
reproduction; but, as I have implied, it is an idealized 
reproduction. All who know the old romance must feel 
this. Those who first become acquainted with the Ar- 
thurian story, through the Idylls, read the old form, after- 
wards, with a feeling of disappointment, and, at first, of 
dishallucination. Not that the new is not like the old ; 
but it is higher and intenser ; idealized, in fact. But a 
fuller acquaintance with the old story shows that the 
ideal thought is there also, only blurred by much that is 
not ideal. Further, this reproduction is so vivid. Bulwer's 
" King Arthur " is a longer poem than the Idylls, keeping 
you therefore more time in its company for the reading ; 
yet the Arthurian characters, as there exhibited, become 
but passing acquaintances, and do not take up their per- 
manent abode in your memory and heart. With Tennyson, 



64 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

it is far otherwise. Enid and Elaine, Guinevere, Lancelot 
and Arthur, are members of the ghostly company that 
inhabit your heart for ever. You never saw them, because 
they lived in a world so different from yours ; but you 
dreamed them once, and the dream haunts you for ever. 

The other aim of the Idylls is the depicture of those six 
characters — the four women and the two men. To take 
the women first. Vivien is a most painful picture. It 
was needful to this second aim, at all events; perhaps 
needful also for the first aim, as showing the devil at work 
to mar the noble design of the blameless king. Vivien is 
physical beauty plus intellect. There is nothing else in 
her that could in any way be called excellent. She is 
ambitious, envious, malevolent. But it is not needful to 
say this. The absence of conscience leaves a man bad 
enough, it leaves a wdman worse. The man may chance 
to be a worldling ; the woman is for certainty a devil. 

" For men at most differ as Heaven and Earth, 
But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell." 

This creature seems voluptuous ; but even her passion is 
feigned, to serve a malignant end. She does not, even in 
lowest sort, love Merlin, or any. She is, as I say, just 
physical beauty and intellect, with all that rank brood of 



RESTOEATIONS. 65 

vices that must ever grow in a woman's heart, where true 
emotion and conscience are not. 

Elaine is, the embodiment of emotion absolute. There is 
nothing else in her. She has the intellect of a child. 
Conscience plays no part in her character, for the emotion 
is absolut% and there is no room left for choice. To try to 
picture Elaine as thinking of the duty of governing her 
feelings, is to try to picture her not Elaine. At first 
sight, she seems to have a strong will ; but it is no more 
will than the fixed persistence of an animal is will. It is 
again but the absolute dominion of a master passion. 
Elaine is incarnate emotion. 

But, now, it is very instructive to observe how altogether 
lovable, and how nearly beautiful the character of Elaine 
is. Pure, strong, unselfish emotion goes very far towards 
making the ideal woman, and seems almost to fulfil the 
duty of intellect and will and conscience. It does not 
make the ideal woman, but it is the corner-stone of the 
structure. Intellect, will, conscience do not make a com- 
plete man (in him, also, emotion is needed), but they 
constitute a large part of manhood. But a woman of these 
three, without the emotion, is a monstrosity. I do not 
mean that the emotions form a very large part of woman's 
nature, this of course ; but I mean that they are the root 

F 



66 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

of her nobility. Out of emotion true womanhood grows, 
as out of conscience and will manhood essentially springs. 
I conceive that the picture of Elaine conveys a great 
lesson and rebuke to us in relation to our modern methods 
of attempting the elevation of women. Better than all 
intellectual culture (though this also is good), fetter than 
all communication of practical aptitudes, would be the lesson 
of the sanctity of emotion — that this is the holy place in 
the woman's nature, that if this be defiled, or given over 
to worldly uses, the whole woman is marred and degraded. 
In the light of this truth, it is almost startling to consider 
how much of the emotional food of women and girls is 
morbid and corrupt. He who has written a pure and 
high-toned novel has done a service to his generation ; but 
there are no sinners against the common well-being so 
great as those who weave elaborate pictures of the un- 
healthy workings of impure hearts, and spread them forth 
for the study of those who have almost ceased to be noble 
as spon as they have tasted of " the tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil." I wish it were not true that certain 
women have been the greatest sinners against their sisters 
in this respect. 

Guinevere's nature is more complex than that of either 
of the women we have hitherto been considering. She 



RESTORATIONS. 67 

is intellectual, and her emotions are strong. Her will 
is weak, but not weaker than that of the majority of 
mankind. She has conscience enough to make her un- 
happy, but not enough to cause her to do right. She is 
not base-minded by nature ; but the fact that she loved 
Lancelot first and then became the wife of Arthur left her 
a great battle to fight, and for this her conscience was not 
keen enough, neither was her will strong enough. But the 
sin made her always unhappy, which was the proof that it 
had not yet wholly destroyed her moral nature. And so 
she goes on always resolving, but never fulfilling. And, 
meantime, the blameless king walks ever before her, and 
she understands him not — this, partly because he is of a 
higher order than she, and partly because that other love 
has blinded her eyes. But then at last comes the demon- 
stration that she also was made in a noble mould (howso- 
ever she may have marred her form), for she is capable of 
a grand remorse. And, gradually, the remorse becomes 
repentance, and her eyes are opened, and at last she under- 
stands the godlike soul of the blameless king, and at 
last she loves him. And so her redemption is accom- 
plished. 

" Ah, great and gentle lord, 

Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint 
Among his warring senses, to thy knights — 



6S A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

I thought I could not breathe in that fine air, 
That pure severity of perfect light — 
I wanted warmth and colour, which I found 
In Lancelot — now I see thee what thou art ; 
Thou art the highest and most human, too ; 
Not Lancelot, nor another. Is there none 
Will tell the King I love him, though so late ? 
Now — ere he goes to the great battle ? None : 
Myself must tell him in that purer life ; 
But now it were too daring. Ah, my God, 
What might I not have made of Thy fair world, 
Had I but loved Thy highest creature here ? 
It was my duty to have loved the highest : 
It surely was my profit, had I known : 
It would have been my pleasure, had I seen. 
We needs must love the highest, when we see it ; 
Not Lancelot, nor another." 

Enid is the perfect type of womanhood. The root of all 
the life that she lives before us is her love for Geraint. 
Out of this comes her perfect faith in him, her meekness, 
her obedience even when he is most harsh, most unjnst, 
most tyrannical. These things she cannot understand; 
but she doubts not they will bear some interpretation 
through love, when the time comes ; and, meantime, she 
loves on, and trusts, and obeys. And, presently, even 
while her heart is most full of obedience, she disobeys him, 
and that out of love, too. It never occurs to her that she 



RESTORATIONS. til) 

is doing right ; she is fulfilling love, and that is right. And 
the "brute earl," when she falls into his hands, cannot 
conquer her will, but the strength of her will is the 
strength of love. And when (as told in the early part of 
the poem), it seems to her that her husband is not living 
worthy of his manhood, she thinks wise thoughts about 
him, but the wisdom is the wisdom of love. As you see 
her putting on the old faded dress at his command, she 
seems the image of incarnate meekness. And about all 
this there is no weakness, but just the highest strength of 
womanhood, for it is the strength of love. A less whole 
natae, or a less perfect love, would have broken down in 
this trial. It avails not to say that she ought to have 
withstood the injustice of Geraint, and that she was poor- 
spirited to submit. It never occurred to her love that he 
was unjust, and she was rich in the only spirit of her life. 
This is the spirit of patient endurance at the hand of God, 
the spirit of martyrdom, the spirit that, in its highest 
manifestation, was glorified upon the cross. It is the 
spirit of the child to his parent, of the wife to her husband, 
of the man to his God. But while it is a phase of man- 
hood, it is the essence of womanhood, and woman is then 
idealized when it is made perfect in her character. 

I have said that it avails not to call Enid poor-spirited. I 



70 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

am half-ashanied to enlarge upon this point, yet the battle 
that all who love this poem and this woman have probably 
had to fight for it and for her, makes it right that I should 
do so. It is said that Geraint was unworthily suspicious, 
arbitrary, unjust. To this the answer is, "Of course; else 
the poem would not have been written. Geraint is not 
the poet's ideal character ; Enid is that. Because Geraint 
was suspicious, arbitrary, unjust, therefore the full exhibi- 
tion of the beauty of Enid's character became possible." It 
is said, then if Geraint was thus unjust and arbitrary, Enid 
ought not to have submitted, but ought to have withstood 
his injustice. To which the answer is, " If Enid had 
resisted, certainly Geraint would have had no right to 
complain. But Enid's perfect womanhood was displayed 
in the fact that her faith and her love kept her from even 
dreaming of injustice. That which to less perfect faith 
and love would have seemed, as it was, a wrong, to her 
was but a mystery. Herein was seen her perfect woman- 
hood. This is the meaning of the poem." 

That exquisite picture of the maiden Enid waiting upon 
the visitor Geraint, and tending his horse, is all of a piece 
with her after life. She had no thought of her dignity ; 
and was then, in her forgetfulness, most nobly dignified, so 
that 



RESTORATIONS. 71 

" Seeing her so sweet and serviceable, 
Geraint had longing in him, evermore, 
To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb 
That crossed the trencher as she laid it down." 

Thus it is that woman wins the worship that is due to her. 
By loving meekness and helpfulness, by simplicity and 
self-forgetfulness, is the crown won. I think that every 
woman amongst us, and every man, too, for that matter, 
ought to be grateful to our Laureate for this noble picture 
of womanhood. 

To realize Lancelot and Arthur it will be well first to try 
to think of Lancelot as he would have been without that 
great blot in bis life. Not Arthur himself is more chival- 
rous, generous, knightly. To Elaine, he is all tenderness, 
as far as his honour may suffer him to be so, and almost 
sternly true, spite of his tenderness. She, with the clear 
sight and yet the blindness of perfect love, sees the man 
as he ought to have been, and worships him accordingly. 

"Marred as he was, he seemed the goodliest man 
That ever among ladies ate in hall, 
And noblest, when she lifted up her eyes. 
However marred, of more than twice her years, 
Seamed with an ancient sword-cut on the cheek, 
And bruised and bronzed, she lifted up her eyes, 
And loved him with that love which was her doom." 



A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 



And, again, 



" And all night long his face before her lived, 
As when a painter, poring on a face, 
Divinely, through all hindrance, finds the man 
Behind it, and so paints him, that his face, 
The shape and colour of a mind and life, 
Lives for his children, ever at its best 
And fullest; so the face before her lived." 

And, once more, 

" But now it is my glory to have loved 
One peerless, without stain : so let me pass, 
My father, howsoe'er I seem to you, 
Not all unhappy, having loved God's best 
And greatest." 

And even his great sin cannot mar him wholly, nor drag 
down all his life and character to its level. Away from 
that, he is still a true knight, and even over that his nobility 
glimmers to his greater pain. 

" His honour rooted in dishonour stood, 
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true." 

And so, of course, his pain is very great. 

" Another sinning on such heights with one, 
The flower of all the West, and all the world, 
Had been the sleeker for it : but in him, 



RESTORATIONS. 73 

His mood was often like a fiend, and rose, 
And drove him into wastes and solitudes 
For agony, who was yet a living soul." 

And then that test of all true knighthood, and of all true 
manhood, the reverence for womanhood, whenever it may 
be found reverable, and awe at woman's love — this is found 

in him. 

" He looked, and more amazed 
Than if seven men had set upon him, saw 
The maiden standing in tbe dewy light. 
He had not dreamed she was so beautiful. 
Then came on him a sort of sacred fear, 
For, silent, though he greeted her, she stood 
Eapt on his face, as if it were a god's." 

And so, being still high enough to understand the noble, 
though low enough to have fallen from it, there grows up 
in him an almost despairing humility, that is not self- 
contempt, only because he is yet too high to have sur- 
rendered all hope of the possible. 

" In me there dwells 
No greatness, save it be some far-off touch 
Of greatness to know well I am not great : 
There is the man." 

It would seem as if the saddest thing in all Lancelot's life 
must have been his feeling; towards Arthur. Had he been 



74 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

wholly a traitor at heart, he would have despised him, or 
hated him, or both. But he still reveres him, and still 
loves him. I think it is not easy to conceive a greater 
punishment for Lancelot, with the power of suffering still 
keen in him, and the sensibility to the worthy and the base 
keenly alive, also, to have to bear, than the living clay 
after day with Arthur, loving him, seeing perpetually in 
him fresh grounds for reverence, and receiving from him 
constant proofs of affection, and care, and trust. For he 
was Arthur's chiefest friend : — 

" In whom I have 
Most love and most affiance," 

said Arthur of him. This punishment it was that saved 
him at last. 

" Alas, for Arthur's greatest knight, a man 
Not after Arthur's heart ! I needs must break 
These bonds that so defame me : not without 
She wills it : would I, if she willed it ? Nay, 
Who knows ? But if I would not, then may God, 
I pray Him, send a sudden angel down 
To seize me by the hair, and bear me far, 
And fling me deep in that forgotten mere, 
Among the tumbled fragments of the hills." 

Lancelot at his best is a noble knight. Arthur is more. 



RESTORATIONS. 75 

There is a consecration upon him. His great mission 
makes him holy. His earnestness diffuses a halo around 
him. He is an apostle ; by gentleness and lovingness, a 
St. John, by enthusiasm and passion of energy, a St. Paul. 

" For the king, 
However mild he seems at home, nor cares 
For triumph in our mimic wars, the jousts — 
For if his own knight casts him down, he laughs, 
Saying, his knights are better men than he — 
Yet in this heathen war the fire of God 
Fills him : I never saw his like : there lives 
No greater leader." 

He is not like Sir Galahad. Sir Lancelot, at his best, is 
noble earth. Sir Galahad has gone to heaven, so to say ; 
he is a monk-warrior, a mystic. Arthur is a saint- 
knight. He is wholly a man, but a godlike man. 

" Thou art the highest and most human, too." 

It is for men and the world he lives, that he may raise 
them both to his ideal standard. To mould the "Knights 
of the Bound Table " to his own image, and through them 
to re-form the world. 

" But I was first of all the kings who drew 
The knighthood-errant of this realm and all 
The realms together, under me their head, 



76 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

In that fair order of my Table Round ; 
A glorious company, the flower of men, 
To serve as model for the mighty world, 
And be the fair beginning of a time." 

This is Arthur as he was before the great sorrow of his 
life fell upon him. When that falls, he is beatified by it. 
His holy indignation for sin, and his divine compassion 
for the sinner, and his bitter human disappointment at the 
failure of his life and his great designs give to that last 
address to the queen at once the exaltation of inspiration, 
and the penetrating power of human emotion. The 
solemnity of that hour clings ever to his memory in our 
minds, and enwraps him in the mystic grandeur of moral 
elevation and supreme grief. 

" Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, 
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ, 
Hereafter, in that world where all are pure, 
We two may meet before high God, and thou 
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know 
I am thine husband— not a smaller soul, 
Not Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that, 
I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence. 
Through the thick night I hear the trumpet blow : 
They summon me their king to lead mine hosts 
Far down to that great battle in the west, 



RESTORATIONS. 11 



Where I must strike against my sister's son 
Leagued with the lords of the "White Horse and 
Once mine, and strike him dead, and meet myself 
Death, or I know not what mysterious doom. 
And thou remaining here will learn the event ; 
But hither shall I never come agaiu, 
Never lie by thy side ; see thee no more, 
Farewell !" 



So, blessing her, he leaves her. The repentant queen, 
broken-hearted and saved by his pitiful lovingness, tries 
once more to see him, but — 

" So she did not see his face, 
Which then was as an angel's, but she saw, 
Wet with the mists, and smitten by the lights, 
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship 
Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire. 
And even then he turned ; and more and more 
The moony vapour rolling round the king, 
Who seemed the phantom of a giant in it, 
Enwound him fold by fold, and made him gray 
And grayer, till himself became as mist 
Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom." 

Thus we must leave the Idylls of the King and with them 
the Arthurian Eeproductions. There remain the Classic 
Beproductions. Of these, The Lotus Eaters and Ulysses form 
a pair, contrasting as strongly as do Sir Galahad and 



78 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

St. Agnes' Eve. And the contrast is of a similar character, 
too — intense activity as opposed to absolute quiescence and 
passivity. But in the Greek pair of portraits there is no 
religious element ; and, so, while the activity of Sir Gala- 
had becomes enthusiasm, that of Ulysses approaches nearer 
to restlessness ; and while the passivity of " St. Agnes " 
becomes mystical rapture, that of the Lotus Eaters is half- 
despairing melancholy. The pairs contrast still further. 
Galahad's activity is noble, and St. Agnes' passivity is 
noble, too, for both come out of a deliberate surrender 
of the heart and life to high faith and hope and aims. 
Ulysses' activity and the Lotus Eaters' passivit}' both come 
out of motives that may be found in the circle of human 
thoughts and wishes. So, in this case, while the activity 
may be noble in its measure, the passivity must be con- 
temptible, for it is the surrender of all effort and high aim 
— the abnegation of true humanity. 

^ In the Lotus Eaters is seen very strongly marked Tenny- 
son's special use of nature, which is also the Greek use of 
nature in relation to art. The essence of the Greek spirit 
in this matter is the identification of nature with the emo- 
tions and passions, the joys and sorrows of humanity. The 
gods of Greek mythology are many of them at the same 
time personified pnases of nature and incarnated human 



RESTORATIONS. 79 

passions. Between man and nature the sympathy seems 
to be so intense that some common symbol will express 
them both. In The Lotus Eaters one scarcely knows 
whether to say that nature sympathises with the men, or 
that the men sympathise with nature — the two together 
form one perfect picture of absolute passivity. This is 
what I have spoken of elsewhere, and have called our 
poet's sensuo-sympathetic use of nature. Throughout his 
poetry nature not only feels with man, she thinks with 
him, doubts with him, believes with him. She does not 
put on an outward seeming to match his mood, but she 
so identifies herself with him that the passion and the 
pain, the doubt and the struggle, the hope and the conquest 
are as much hers as his. She is not wise, has not great 
lessons to teach him, as in Wordsworth, yet, oftentimes, 
the thoughts and feelings seem to be of her suggesting, and 
man rather joins in than initiates the yearning and the 
effort. From The Lotus Eaters up to In Memoriam this 
sensuo-sympathetic use of nature is to be found in our 
poet, and this characteristic at once distinguishes him 
among modern poets, and renders him the most accom- 
plished restorer of the spirit of classic art. 

Tithonus is at once statuesque and emotional — a combi- 
nation by no means easy to achieve, yet always achieved 



80 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

in the highest form of classical art, whether ancient or 
modern. It has all the chaste severity of a piece of sculp- 
ture, yet it can bring the tears into your eyes. 

" The homes 
Of happy men that have the power to die, 
And grassy barrows of the happier dead," 

haunts you just in proportion to the very reticence of 
emotion it displays. The poem is a sonata, and is then 
most powerful in its action upon the feelings, when the 
intellect has mastered and grown familiar with the outer 
form. It renders up, at all, the feeling that lies at its 
heart, only to him who will put himself into intellectual 
sympathy with its forms. 

(Enone is warmer. It is still strictly classic, hut there 
is more emotion in it — it is more strongly human. In 
Titlionus, you witness the passion and despair of a god ; 
(Enone is wholly a woman. You could weep for Tithonus, 
but you cannot imagine him shedding tears for himself. 
(Enone says, 

" My eyes are full of tears, my heait of love ; 
My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, 
And I - j all aweary of my life." 



But that which most distinguishes " (Enone " from the 






RESTORATIONS. 81 

other classic reproductions is the moral significance infused 
into it. A man might take as a maxim for his life- 
guidance — 

'* Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power. 
Yet not for power (power of herself 
Would come uncalled for), hut to live hy law, 
Acting the law we live by without fear ; 
And because right is right, to follow right 

• Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence." 

There is no need to dwell longer upon these beautiful 
classic poems, but in passing away from the Eeproductions 
we must recur for a moment to a matter upon which we 
have already briefly dwelt. All these poems exhibit the 
strong dramatic tendency of Tennyson's genius. That 
power of projecting himself into many and diverse cha- 
racters, which as we have seen is the dramatic power, 
he has in a very high degree. Not less is he able to 
realize times and atmospheres of thought very different 
from his own. But, unlike Shakspeare, he never leaves 
his own personality quite behind. Equally unlike Byron, 
he does not suffer his own personality to swamp that of the 
character he is exhibiting. To do this, is to have no real 
dramatic power at all. The personality of Tennyson is 

G 



82 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

rather shown by a manner of interpreting character. 
Shakspeare does not seem to interpret at all — he just sets 
the character before you to interpret itself. Of course he, 
also, really interprets, but after so many methods, that you 
cannot identify any one as Shaksperian. He may present 
a character to you under any aspect — measure it by any 
standard. It may be for his wit or his wisdom, his knavery 
or his honesty, his practical power or his thoughtfulness, or 
any of a score of other characteristics that Shakspeare 
presents a man to you. It is under one aspect, measured 
by one standard, that Tennyson's characters always present 
themselves, and that is the moral. You can scarcely think 
of a leading character of his, in which some great moral 
feature, good or bad, is not brought out. And generally 
it is that region of the moral that lies closest to sensibility 
that is illustrated. It is the tone that interests him, and 
that he makes you feel. Thus there is in him the true 
dramatic power and habit, but dashed with the tendency 
to analysis by the special cue of his own mind, which is 
the characteristic of the subjective poet. 



CHAPTER V. 

IDYLLS. 

The group to which I next turn I have named Idylls. It 
comprises 

The Miller's Daughter. Lady Clare. 

The Gardener's Daughter. Lord of Burleigh. 

Dora. The Beggar Maid. 

Edwin Morris. The Brook (Maud). 

The Talking Oak. Enoch Arden. 

The Daisy. Sea Dreams (Enoch Arden j. 

Concerning most of these, it is necessary to say very 
little indeed; concerning some of them, nothing at all. 
They are, for the most part, pure idylls, with no special 
meaning or teaching beyond the beauty and sweetness of 
the story. Most of them are very sweet indeed. Less 
high-pitched than many of the Laureate's writings, they 
are more tender than any. Witness the first three on my 



84 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

list. Can there be any sweeter love-gossip than the 
Miller's Daughter contains ; any tenderer beauty than that 
of the Gardener's Daughter, both in what it reveals and in 
what it conceals ; anything to take more entire possession 
of the heart than Dora f Dora has a moral ; but it is a 
very obvious one, and it is not in this that the value of the 
poem consists. Such poems are as pure-hearted, high- 
toned women living amongst us ; they make life sweeter 
and holier, and distil emotion into sanctitjr. The warm 
human love of the Miller's Daughter and the Gardener's 
Daughter is as pure as infancy ; and the thought of such 
women, and such manly love as these set forth, is like an 
air of heaven sweeping tenderly and solemnly through an 
age that chokes its holiest emotions with the foul vapours 
of covetousness and worldly pride. 

I think that Lady Clare, The Lord of Burleigh, and The 
Beggar Maid, make a charming little group, though the 
second of the three is very sad. But the philosophy of 
gentlehood contained in those three lines — 

" And her gentle mind was such 
That she grew a noble lady, 
And the people loved her much," — 

is worth the price of a tear. And, then, the end makes it 
all happy and peaceful, though so sad. 



IDYLLS. 85 

" Then her people, softly treacling, 
Bore to earth her body, drest 
In the dress that she was wed in, 
That her spirit might have rest." 

Lady Clare might almost have been placed among the 
Reproductions ; it affords the only example of the ballad 
manner we have throughout Tennyson's writings. 

Edwin Morris I have put among the Idylls, for it is just 
a love-story like the Gardener's Daughter and the others. 
It differs from them in that the love comes to no worthy 
end, agreeing in this respect with Locksley Hall. But it is 
too little earnest to be put among the Lamentations, though, 
as far as it is serious, it is a protest of the same order as 
those. The lover who presently writes — 

" Yet, long ago, 
I have pardoned little Letty ; not, indeed, 
It may be, for her own dear sake, but this, 
She seems a part of those fresh days to me — " 

does not need any deep commiseration, and is not greatly 
moved with indignation at his injuries. 

The Talking Oak and The Brook pair well together, both 
on account of their fancifulness, and because of the ex- 
ceeding grace with which the fancies are worked out. 
You catch yourself smiling again and again as you read 



86 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

them, not because they amuse you exactly, but because of 
the exquisite art of their most natural fancifulness. The 
Brook touches you deeper, now and then. The babbling 
of the rivulet has an echo of pathos in it. The Talking Oak 
keeps tenderly playful all through. That is a dainty line 
which describes a young girl as 

"So slightly, musically made;" 

and that a dainty conceit which says, 

" But light as any wind that blows, 
So fleetly did she stir, 
The flower she touched on dipt and rose, 
And turned to look at her." 

Enoch Arden is the latest and the longest of Tennyson's 
pure idylls, and it is one upon which his lovers have spent 
much thought, and concerning which they have asked 
and have had to answer many questions. To those who 
had watched his never faltering power up to the climax of 
that inspired utterance of Arthur over the prostrate queen, 
there seemed little reason for anxiety concerning his new 
gift, when Enoch Arden was announced. When the book, 
and, specially, the poem, Enoch Arden, came to be read, 
there appeared the curious phenomenon of those who loved 
him best feeling disappointment at his latest gift ; while 



IDYLLS. 87 

those who heretofore had loved him least, and had pro- 
fessed to understand him least, thought this his best poem. 
Who were right was the question, and is. Or, the ques- 
tion of rightness apart, how may the fact be accounted 
for? 

To this latter question, the answer, I think, is easy. 
Enoch Arden is the least Tennysonian of Tennyson's poems, 
both in manner and in structure. The story is full of 
coincidences, which his stories never otherwise are. There 
is a sort of mechanical supernaturalism, such as is found 
in pagan art, instead of that spiritual supernaturalism 
which otherwise pervades his writings, and which seems 
the most deeply natural thing of all, God being postulated. 
This mechanical supernaturalism belongs to the highest 
pagan art, being proper in it, because of the quality of the 
pagan conceptions of divinity. But in modern times we 
look for this mechanical supernaturalism only, as a rule, 
in the works of such artists as are not themselves able to 
rise to the conception of 

" That God, which ever lives and loves, 
* One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off, divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 

The kind of supernaturalism to which I refer under the 



88 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

name "mechanical" is such as in that instance when, on 
Annie's marriage-day, it is said of Enoch that 

" Though faintly, merrily, far and far away, 
He heard the pealing of his parish hells ;" 

or, again, when Annie, turning for a sign to her Bible, 
read (though she misread) the words, "under a palm-tree," 
and, sleeping afterwards, dreamed that she saw her hus- 
band 

'' Sitting on a height, 
Under a palm-tree, over him the sun ;" 

or, once more, when in Aylmer's Field, .the poet, as from 
his own mouth, says, 

" Star to star vibrates light : may soul to soul 
Strike through a finer element of her own ? 
So, from afar, touch as at once ? or why 
That night, that moment when she named his name 
Did the keen shriek, ' Yes love, yes Edith, yes,' 
Shrill, till the comrade of his chambers woke, 
And came upon him half-arisen from sleep, 
With a weird bright eye, sweating and trembling, 
His hair as it were crackling into flames, 
His body half flung forward in pursuit, 
And his long arms stretched as to grasp a flyer." 

Now this kind of supernaturalism is something, very 



IDYLLS. 89 

different from that suggested in In Memoriam (and to be 
hereafter spoken of) in the words — 

" No visual shade of some one lost 
But he, the spirit himself may come 
When all the nerve of sense is dumb 
Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost ;" 

very different from the presentiments haunting Maud, and 
the dream which helps the sad man to a complete recovery 
of moral health ; very different from that teaching of an 
all-pervading Presence, permeating and shaping our lives, 
which makes our Laureate's writings so dear to us. 

This element of mechanical supernaturalism tends to give 
to the thoughtful student the impression of unreality, and 
therefore of weakness, in the structure of the story ; while, 
on the other hand, it pleases those whose standards of 
judgment have been formed by lower masters. Hence the 
anomalous antagonism of opinion out of comment upon 
which grew the foregoing remarks. 

Whether there is any underlying justification for the 
introduction of this mechanical supernaturalism I do not 
know. Starting from our faith, in our poet, it would seem 
likely that there is. But I do not see it ; and, to my 
mind, the poem would have more beauty and interest and 
moral significance, were this element absent. 



90 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

The other respect in which Enoch Arden seeins un-Ten- 
nysonian is its manner. Not only does the movement of 
the verse miss that wonderful swell and music which 
characterizes near all the poet's blank verse ; not only is 
the expression simple almost to severity ; there is also an 
absence of his own peculiar turns of thought and modes 
of expression. Of such passages as those in which the 
uninitiated profess to find no meaning, but which often 
afford to his disciples the fullest revelation of the master's 
mind, thei*e are none. This change has been called a 
falling off; it has been praised as an advance. It is 
safest simply to call it a change. That the cause of the 
change lies in no falling off of power, the volume affords 
ample proof. Even Enoch Arden itself contains passages 
of unexcelled gorgeousness or intensity. That passage 
commencing — ■ 

" The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns " — 

and ending — 

" The scarlet shafts of sunrise, but no sail," 

cannot be overmatched, nor is there anything of more 
intense pathos than the passage beginning — 

"Now when the dead man come to life beheld." 



And if any disciple of the Laureate should miss something 
of the old pleasure under these new conditions, he may be 
reconciled to the fact by the consideration that the new 
form has won for his master many new lovers who hereto- 
fore had failed to lay hold upon even the edge of his 
garment. 

And, all supposed drawbacks notwithstanding, Enoch 
Arden is a grand poem by that highest test of a poem, the 
worthy presentment of ideal character. Eobbed of all 
heroic accidents, the man Enoch Arden is a true hero, 
after the highest conception of a hero. A man of uncon- 
querable ivill, by the might of love and faith and duty — 
this is the highest hero, and this is Enoch Arden. Through 
all his simple, homely life, the quality of the man is to be 
seen, but he is proclaimed full hero only when the great 
ordeal has come. He is as great as King Arthur, none the 
less that, in his supreme hour, his task is to bear and abstain 
rather than to do. He is great by his unconquerable will, 
yet his strength is not the strength of dogged resistance, 
but a conscious and deliberate bowing before love and duty, 
by the underlying might of faith. 

" He was not all unhappy. His resolve 
Upbore hhn, and firm faith, and evermore 
Prayer from a living source within the will 



92 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

And beating up through all the bitter world, 
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, 
Kept him a living soul." 

It has been much debated whether it was true art, first, 
not to let Enoch speak to his wife and children before he 
died, and, second, to make him, dying without seeing them, 
let them know that he had returned at all. To determine 
these points, it must be considered that the conception 
of Enoch is that of a man altogether noble. Any emo- 
tional satisfaction gained at the cost of making him less 
noble would have been false art, therefore. Now his 
appearance in the new family circle, whatever doubtful 
pleasure it might have afforded to him, would have caused 
utter consternation and pain to all others concerned. To 
Philip, it would have meant a ruined life ; while Annie 
would have found herself severed from both ties at once, 
and shocked beyond recovery by the discovery of her 
false position. A low-toned or morbid artist would have 
made them meet — the situation has been produced more 
than once in recent novels to the entire offence of all 
readers of refinement and sensibility. The most that 
could be permitted to Enoch, consistent with his nobility 
and with true art-feeling, was that terrible satisfaction 
he obtained when 






IDYLLS. 93 

" The dead man come to life beheld 
His wife, his wife no more, and saw the babe 
Hers, yet not his, upon the father's knee, 
And all the warmth, the peace, the happiness, 
And his own children, tall and beautiful, 
And him, that other, reigning in his place, 
Lord of his rights, and of his children's love." 

Concerning the other point, it was some time before I 
could arrive at a conclusion for my own satisfaction, when 
first I read the poem. The answer comes out of the con- 
sideration that the conception of Annie is in no way that 
of an ideal character. She is a faithful, loving woman, as 
ordinary men and women go, but she is of the common, not 
of the highest type. This is seen all through the poem. 
Her long hesitation about marrying Philip is as much fear 
as fidelity. It was through her suggestion, half or wholly 
unconscious, it may be, that he first spoke of it to her. 

" I thought not of it : but — I know not why — 
Their voices make me feel so solitary," 

is the language, not of the desolation of faithful love, but 
of the longing for some new interest and sympathy. After 
she is married, an almost fear of Enoch's return seems to 
haunt her. 



94 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

" A footstep seemed to fall beside her path, 
She knew not whence ; a whisper on her ear, 
She knew not what ; nor loved she to be left 
Alone at home, nor ventured out aloue. 
What ailed her then, that ere she entered, often 
Her hand dwelt lingeringly on the latch, 
Fearing to enter." 



In this state of inind the certainty of Enoch's death would 
be a comfort to her, even though accompanied by the pain 
of knowing that he had been alive, when, before, she 
thought him dead. Therefore, that Enoch should leave 
word for her to be told is true art, upon the conception of 
the ideal type of Enoch's character, and the common type 
of the character of Annie. 

The weakest portion of Enoch Arden is the three last lines. 
After the completeness of the ending in the words, 

" There came so loud a calling of the sea 
That all the houses in the haven rang. 
He woke, he rose, he spread his arms abroad 
Crying with a loud voice ' A sail ! a sail ! 
I am saved !' and so fell back and spoke no more," 

those three extra lines chill one. To name him " strong, 
heroic soul" seems so entirely unnecessary, and what 



IDYLLS. 95 

kind of funeral they gave him so unimportant and unin- 
teresting. 



I have included Sea Dreams among the Idylls, though it 
has a claim to take place in another group also. The poem 
calls for no special comment. There is, however, one 
striking passage of two lines in it as it was originally 
published in " Macmillan's Magazine," that is, I think, half 
spoiled by its new form in the volume. It originally 
stood, 

" It is not true that second thoughts are best, 
» But first, and third, which are a riper first." 

Now this is so strikingly true, and so useful a truth to 
teach, that it is disappointing to find the poet seeming to 
doubt it himself, and changing the form to 

" Is it so true that second thoughts are best? 
Not first and third, which are a riper first ?" 

Moreover, the change is as false in art as it is disappointing. 
A man in the mood of the husband in Sea Dreams does not 
talk interrogatively, but rather most dogmatically. All 
through the rest of the poem he does so talk. 

The way in which first and third, and not second 



96 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

thoughts, are best, is this. The first thoughts are impul- 
sive, and the first impulses of most men are worthy and 
generous, as far as they go. Later come more selfish or 
over-cautious considerations, and so the second thoughts 
are timid and less generous. With the baser sort of men 
the matter stops here, but in the worthier sort, the braver 
and more generous motives reassert themselves, and either 
concpier, or, at least, modify the timid and selfish pleadings. 
So in the highest characters, the third thoughts are just as 
noble as the first, and wiser into the bargain. 

If the " thoughts " be about the judgment of character, 
as they are in the poem, then the first thoughts are instinc- 
tive judgments, and these, in most men, are true, as far as 
they go. And, indeed, they go a long way, only, rather, 
to what the man is essentially, than what he is accidentally 
— detecting not so much traits of character as tone — not so 
much how a man acts, as how he thinks and feels. At all 
events, having made our first instinctive judgment, we 
immediately begin to modify it, either from mistrust, if we 
have judged favourably, or from relenting, if we have 
judged unfavourably, or because our experience of the 
person contradicts our first judgment. But that early 
experience is worth very little, because few men wear their 
characters on their sleeves, or give you any just impression 



IDYLLS. 97 

of themselves by their outer manner to strangers — this, 
not, as a rule, from any deliberate desire of deception or 
concealment, but just because it is impossible for a man to 
show himself to those who do not in some measure know 
him. But, later, comes the fuller knowledge of the man, 
wherein you learn his principles, his habits of thought — 
his tone, in fact. This is the very thing which the first 
instinctive judgment detected, and so the third thought 
becomes a riper first, and both are truer than the second. 
Therefore I hope that the Laureate will some day find about 
this passage, as he has done about many passages of his 
own before, that 

" It is not true that second thoughts are best, 
But first, and third, which are a riper first." 



A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 



CHAPTER VI. 

LAMENTATIONS. 

The group which I have ventured to call Lamentations 
consists of four poems : — 

Locksley Hall. 

Lady Clara Vere de Vere. 

Ay-lmer's Field. 

Maud (Though under one of its aspects only). 

I have named these poems Lamentations, because they are 
complaints and protests against some special fault of the 
age. As a rule, the poet, except he be also a satirist, does 
not thus address himself to special and temporary charac- 
teristics, dealing rather with the permanent and the essen- 
tial. As error has many forms, while truth has but one, 
so wrong is ever-varying, while the right, which is its 
antidote, does not change at all. The satirist strikes at 



LAMENTATIONS. 99 

the passing form of the wrong ; the poet, proper, preaches 
and hodies forth the immutable right, and so makes war 
upon the wrong. Enid and Arthur and Enoch Arden are 
ideal figures for all time, eminently appropriate to this age, 
because always eminently appropriate. But there are 
provocations which compel the poet to descend from his 
sphere in the eternal, and take part in the battle of the 
temporal, the present. To such a compulsion these Lamen- 
tations are due. In his proper sphere, Tennyson had 
taught nobly the sanctity of love. This is the significance 
of those exquisite idylls, the Gardener's Daughter, the 
Miller's Daughter, and others. From his still, happy poet- 
throne he sang that love is holy. But men would not 
listen, and went on bartering the forms of love for gold, 
and crushing true love under the heel of pride and covet- 
ousness. Against this, the poet is forced to protest, and 
these Lamentations (except Lady Clara) embody his utter- 
ance. 

The protest begins in LocJcsley Hall, waxes louder in 
Maud, and reaches its climax in a wail of unredeemed 
tragedy in Aylmer's Field. In the first poem, the woman 
yields to the tyranny, is unfaithful to her lover, and marries 
a man greatly below his mark and her own, in mind and 
character. Here no tragedy, as we count tragedy, can 



100 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

result. Self-contempt, and gradual degradation to the 
level of the man she has chosen must be her fate, and so 
prophesies her lover. But we do not call this tragedy. 
For himself, he does no desperate deed — that would be to 
be a fool, the woman being what she is — but he hardens 
into contempt for her, and for womanhood, and for 
woman's love. Thus the effect of this faithless love is the 
deterioration of both characters. For resource he resolves 
to return to his old pursuits and interests— the study of 
the progress of knowledge and of man in the past, and the 
greater progress in store for both in the future. In the 
main thread of this poem there is nothing very striking — 
the beauties lie in the incidental thoughts and sentiments ; 
many of these are very noble and exquisitely expressed. 

In Aylmer's Field and in Maud the women are faithful, 
but in each the worldliness avails, not to conquer love, 
but to close it. In each, the lovers are parted ; in each, 
the woman dies. In Aylmer's Field, the man is driven to 
madness, and to death ; in Maud, to madness, but after- 
wards to nobility. In each, terrible punishment falls 
upon the wrong-doers. Aylmer's Field is unredeemed 
tragedy — a bitter lamentation only. In Maud there is 
light beyond. It will be well to examine these two poems 
a little more in detail. 



L AMENTA TIONS. 101 

111 Aylmer' s Field there are two families — a county 
magnate, his wife and daughter, and a country rector and 
his brother. Both families are old, and the Hall and the 
Eectory have been on familiar footing from immemorial 
time. The magnate, Sir Aylmer Aylmer, and his wife are 
proud — coarsely proud and vulgar, notwithstanding their 
ancient name. Their daughter Edith embodies the graces 
which they lack — for she is tender and loving, forgetful of 
self, 

" Queenly responsive when the loyal hand 
Rose from the clay it worked in as she passed. 

A voice 
Of comfort and an open hand of help, 
A splendid presence flattering the poor roofs 
Revered as theirs, but kindlier than themselves." 

She and the boy Leolin Averill, the brother of the Eector, 
almost grow up together. Will they love ? 

" How should love, 
Whom the cross-lightnings of four chance-met eyes 
Flash into fiery life from nothing, follow 
Such dear familiarities of dawn ? 
Seldom, but when he does, Master of all." 

Sir Aylmer had no fear ; he 



102 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

" Would care no more for Leolin's walking with her, 
Than for his old Newfoundland's. 

****** 
To dream 
That love could bind them closer, well had made 
The hoar hair of the baronet bristle up 
With horror, worse than had he heard his priest 
Preach an inverted scripture, sons of men, 
Daughters of God." 

But the love came, nevertheless, in brother and sister 
guise, at first, 

" But where a passion yet unborn, perhaps, 
Lay bidden, as the music of the moon 

in the plain eggs of the nightingale." 



At last it comes to be known — to themselves, and then to 
Sir Aylmer. He, with the coarseness proper to him, 
demands of Leolin, 

" And you shall say that having spoken with me, 
And, after, looked into yourself, you find 
That you meant nothing ;" 

To which Leolin replies, 

"I 

So foul a traitor to myself and her, 
Never, oh, never.'' 



LAMENTATIONS. 103 

So they are parted, but true in heart for ever. For a 
time letters help them, but these are discovered by 
treachery, and stopped, she not understanding how. 

" So that the gentle creature, shut from all 
Her charitable use, and face to face 
With twenty months of silence, slowly lost, 
Nor greatly cared to lose, her hold on life. 
Last, some low fever, ranging round to spy 
The weakness of a people or a house, 
Like flies that haunt a wound, or deer, or men, 
Or almost all that is, hurting the hart — 
Save Christ as we believe him — found the girl, 
And flung her down upon a couch of fire, 
"Where, careless of the household faces near, 
And crying upon the name of Leolin, 
She, and with her the race of Aylmer, 



That moment she names his name in dying, Leolin hears 
her call him, in his sleep, as it seems, and answers her 
trembling and panting. The next day Leolin knows the 
dreadful news, and that day he dies by his own hand. 

The parents ask the brother of Leolin to preach a 
funeral sermon for Edith. Then comes that terrible 
sermon upon the text " Behold your house is left unto you 
desolate." I think it is one of the most daring situations 



104 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

in all literature. From the parish pulpit, before the 
parish congregation, the rector of the parish, the brother 
of the dead man grown aged with horror and grief in a 
handful of days, pours down upon the heads of the parents 
of the woman, dead, too, whom his brother had loved, that 
terrible blast of reproach for those two deaths which they 
had caused. And that blast strikes them dead, too ; for in 
a month, the mother dies, and the father becomes imbecile, 
and never leaves the house again until he leaves it to be 
buried. I say it is very daring. 

Aylmers Field is a protest against the tyranny of the 
pride of birth and wealth over love. We may be sure 
that it is this by the explicit intention of the poet. Such 
a man as Tennyson does not tell so painful a story for 
nothing, or for the morbid pleasure of telling a painful 
story. It is true that the wickedness against which he 
protests is old enough, and that the protest has been times 
enough repeated. But so long as the sin holds, the protest 
must be uttered, even though the form of utterance should 
remain unvaried. Here it is riot unvaried, of a certainty. 

But underlying the protest against the tyranny of the 
pride of birth over love, is a protest against the pride of 
birth itself, or at least against the commoner and baser 
form of this pride. Leolin's words, 



LAMENTATIONS. 105 

" Fall back upon a name ! rest, rot in that ! 
Not keep it noble, make it nobler ? fools, 
With such a vantage-ground of nobleness !" 

might be set as the text of a sermon often preached by our 
Laureate. 

There are two kinds of pride of ancestry. The one is a 
poor mean thing, resting in the past, and content with the 
shadow of another man's greatness ; the other is a living, 
stimulating powei-, inciting the man himself, by the con- 
templation of idealized forms of worth and duty, to present 
worthy effort. The one is a worm at the root, the grave 
of personal character ; the other is the soil from which its 
roots draw constant nourishment. The one is a narrow 
torpid thing, nursing egotism and scorn of others ; the 
other is the parent of that wider sense of brotherhood, 
which is the offspring of all true enthusiasm. The one 
demands honour from others, because some one else has 
been so great; the other finds in the greatness of that 
some one else a reason for self-horiour arid the loyalty to 
duty which is the fruit of self-honour. The one, with all 
its grand airs, is close akin to toadyism and snobbishness ; 
the other is a fertile parent of self-respect, and allied to a 
noble humility. 

These two that affect an outside kinship, are in fact 



106 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

antipodal in the character, and inhabit antipodal natures. 
Against the mean counterfeit, Aylmer's Field is a protest 5 
and a protest driven home by a startling and bitter ex- 
ample : — 

"But there, out yonder, earth 
Lightens from her own central hell — there 
The red fruit of an old idolatry — 
The heads of chiefs and princes fall so fast, 
They cling together in the ghastly sack — 
The land all shambles — naked marriages 
Flash from the bridge, and ever-murdered France, 
By shores that darken with the gathering wolf, 
Buns in a river of blood to the sick sea." 

I have called Aylmer's Field " unredeemed tragedy." 
It is the only considerable example among the Laureate's 
writings of a sad story without, at least, moral compensa- 
tions. In both In Memoriam and Maud, as we shall see, 
sorrow bears high fruit. In Aylmer's Field no one seems 
to " grasp a far-off interest of tears." Taken with the 
dominant sadness of the whole Enoch Arden volume, this 
is a fact to make one thoughtful. 

In the study of Maud, it is first of all necessary to clearly 
realize the character of the man, Maud's lover. The 
central fact in the conception of him is his predisposition 



LAMENTATIONS. 107 

to madness. This, at first, takes the form of intense 
morbidness, giving to all his emotions, whether of sorrow 
or joy, an intensity possible only under such conditions. 
The outer facts of his life determine that the emotions 
shall he painful. The terrible fate of his father, and the 
sad death of his mother, haunt him unceasingly. More- 
over, he believes his father's failure before his death to 
have come from treachery on the part of others, and this 
leads him to brood on the rottenness of the world, and the 
contemptibility of mankind. He includes himself within 
the range of his scorn. He is not rich enough to have 
the pleasures and the interests of wealth within his reach, 
yet not poor enough to have to provide for his own wants. 
So his whole time is free for these brooding thoughts. 
The result is an intense self-consciousness, and almost self- 
hatred, coupled with a gloomy mistrust of the world and 
its destiny. But all through, it is manifestly not the dis- 
content of a mean mind, but the diseased broodings of a 
mind that has no centre of thought and of interest outside 
its own being. For he is lonely and unloved. 

Then, upon his life enters Maud, and, into his heart, 
love for her. For a long time, the old morbid bitterness 
struggles with the new love, but, at last, the love conquers. 
Then he is as hajopy as before he was sad, and as full of 



108 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

hopeful love for men and the world as before he was scorn- 
ful and distrustful. The intensity of his happiness and 
love and gratitude are pictured in those glorious bursts of 
lyric beauty that make the heart of the poem. The great 
teaching of the poem, thus far, seems to be that the escape 
from the sorrows of self, and elevation from lowness of 
soul, are to be found in transferring the centre of gravity, 
so to speak, of the thoughts and interests from self into 
another being and another life. While he interprets the 
world by the key of his own life and fate — making the 
world but a second and magnified self — he is unhappy 
and bitter, contemptuous and despairing. When the centre 
of the world is to him Maud — when she is the first being 
in the world, and the world is seen in the light of her — ■ 
he is happy and genial, earnest and full of hope. It was 
not the change from selfishness to unselfishness that took 
place in him — he was not selfish before — but rather from 
self-centredness to self-forgetfulness. The change was 
not at first moral, but rather emotional ; the fruit was 
a moral change, and new eyes with which to view the 
world. 

The other great lesson of the first part of Maud is that, 
to certain natures, happiness is more morally helpful than 
sorrow. There is much talk that seems to imply that the 



LAMENTATIONS. 109 

one great disciplinal thing in the world is grief. But 
there are natures from which sorrow seems to sap out all 
the moral power, and to which joy is as a new life. The 
fruits of a great joy are oftentimes holier and intenser than 
those of sorrow. I think that all sorrow that is to be help- 
ful to the moral nature must have some element of joy or 
hope in it. In unmixed sorrow there is no life. That the 
profoundest sorrows may have a deep undertone of happi- 
ness, every true mourner knows, and this sorrow it is which 
is nearest to nobleness. Lower sorrows that are mere 
fretful pain have no kinship to holiness. So it is with 
the contrary emotion. Pleasure that is mere pleasure 
helps no one ; but that profound joy that seems to reach 
down to the great underlying mystery and pain, this is 
almost holiness itself. The truth is that all great emotion, 
whether of sorrow or joy, is ennobling to the nature, but 
mere pain or adversity, mere pleasure or prosperity, these 
have little moral power in them. And, of the two great 
extremes, joy is the higher, and bears the higher fruit. 
The man who, under the burden of the sorrow of life, 
creeps slowly upwards to holiness and to God, doubts not 
that, under the glow of the great joy to come, he shall 
mount on the wings of rapture into ever higher and higher 
ranges of spiritual being. And it is when God opens the 



110 A STUDY OF TENNTSON. 

windows of His heaven, and lets a gleam of divine joy fall 
upon the heart, that the soul flashes nearest to His face. 
I think that the only true elevation is in happiness, but it 
has pleased Him that this ennobling happiness shall often 
be found at the bottom of a deep draught of sorrow. 

During the time of their happiness, Maud's brother has 
appeared, now and then. He is a repulsive figure, and, at 
last; by his coarse violence, a duel is brought about, and 
the lover has to leave England. He never sees Maud any 
more, and before very long she dies, and his grief developes 
his tendencj' to madness. After a while he recovers, and 
determines to join the expedition about to sail for the 
Crimea to commence the last great war. 

This poem is a Lamentation, as I have said. In parts, 
the complaint is very bitter, and the protest very loud. It 
is a protest against the worldliness overriding love in 
men and in nations, and a complaint of the misery and 
degradation resulting therefrom. But it is so much more 
than a Lamentation, because it contains a philosophy of 
cure, as I have partly shown. Therefore I have caused it 
to stand here, leading on from the Lamentations to the 
Philosophical poems which we shall next consider. 

To resume. In this second part the Lamentation is loud. 
The terrible contrast between the happinesss with which 



LAMENT A TIONS. 1 1 1 

the first part ends, and the despair with which the second 
part hegins, is itself a bitter Lamentation against that 
coarse, worldly, brutal brother, or more truly against the 
spirit which he embodies and represents. 

But, beyond the Lamentation, the two great points in 
the second part of the poem are, first, that, when he re- 
covers from his madness, it is to a life as healthy, though 
not as happy as when Mand lived and he loved her, that 
the man awakens, not to the morbid state of the earlier 
time ; and, second, that England too has been awakened 
from her self-centred worldly condition, into a truer and 
nobler state of heart, and that by the same means as first ~ 
saved the man — that is, by throwing her thoughts and 
interests outside herself into some other nation and its 
life. How is it that the man, though once more stricken 
down by grief — grief, too, full of terror and bitter regret — 
yet keeps the strength and the health of soul that happi- 
ness had brought him ? Did he take refuge in pkilosoplry 
— in general arguments concerning what is worthy of man, 
and due from man ? It was not so. There are not many 
men who can be saved by general considerations. This 
man was saved by a person, and the love of a person, in the 
first instance ; he is saved by that person, and that love, 
still. It is wonderful to think how nearly all that is done 



112 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

upon men is done by the influence of some personal being, 

and how, nevertheless, men are perpetually wandering 

away from the person who can help and save them, to the 

system, the creed, the philosophy that cannot. I think, if 

I may sum all up in the highest instance, when we have 

returned from Christianity to Christ we shall find several 

difficulties solved, many troubles healed. 

It is Maud and her love that saves him still. The centre 

of his being is still outside himself, and so he is preserved 

from morbidness and despair. Before her death, he 

says, 

. " For years, a measureless ill, 
For years, -for ever, to part ; 
But she, she would love me still ; 
And as long, God, as she 
Have a grain of love for me, 
So long, no doubt, no doubt, 
Shall I nurse in my dark heart, 
However weary, a spark of will 
Not to be trampled out." 

When he knows her dead, he says, 

" Ah Christ, that it were possible 
For one short hour to see '. 
The souls we loved, that they might tell us 
What and where they be." 



LAMENTATIONS. 113 

And after he recovers from his madness, he says, 

» 
" It fell at a time of year 

When the face of night is fair on the dewy downs, 

And the shining daffodil dies, and the Charioteer 

And starry Gemini hang like glorious crowns 

Over Orion's grave low down in the west, 

That like a silent lightning under the stars, 

She seemed to divide, in a dream, from a band of the blest, 

And spoke of a hope for the world in the coming wars ; 

' And in that hope, dear soul, let trouble have rest, 

Knowing I tarry for thee,' and pointed to Mars, 

As he glowed like a ruddy shield on the Lion's breast. 

And it was but a dream, yet it yielded a dear delight 

To have looked, though but in a dream, upon eyes so fair, 

That had been, in a weary world, my one thing bright ; 

And it was but a dream, yet it lightened my despair, 

When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right." 

England's redemption was to come through war. Not 
through the suffering of war (though this also may he 
needed hy nations as by men), hut through those reawakened 
sympathies, through that departure from self- centre dn ess, 
which could lead her to voluntarily enter into the loss and 
suffering of war. For it cannot but he true that as a man 
is incapable of nobility while his own life and interests 
monopolize his attention, so also it must be with a nation. 

i 



114 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

There is a truth in the principle of non-intervention ; but 
also it may easily pass into a lie ; and a nation has con- 
sented to be ignoble when it has resolved that for no causes 
outside the circle of its own interests it will risk the issues 
or incur the sacrifices of war. 



( 115 ) 



CHAPTER VII. 

PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 

Passing on from Maud, which, in the midst of its lyrical 
and dramatic richness, is so largely philosophical, we come 
next to the Philosophic Poems, proper. They are, 

The Princess. 

"You ask me why, though ill at ease." 

" Of old sat freedom on the heights." 

" Love thou thy land, with love far-broughl." 

The Poet. 

The Poet's Mind. 

Love and Death. 

The Golden Year. 

The Palace of Art. 

The Two Voices. 

The Yision of Sin. 

Will (Maud). 

In Memoriam. 



116 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

As Maud has a double aspect, being, at the same time, a 
Lamentation and a Philosophical poem, so The Princess, 
though Philosophical in intention, is Idyllic in form. The 
poet calls it a Medley ; and I must confess that the form of 
the poem does not seem to me particularly pleasant or 
graceful. But there are many noble passages, and the 
central thought of the poem is high and true. It stands 
thus : — 

A woman, a princess, betrothed in childhood, rebels 
against the betrothal and against the place assigned to 
womanhood in the order of society. She founds a college, 
with intent to educate women after the manner of men, 
and so begin to obliterate the ancient inequality and cause 
that there shall be 

" Every where, 
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, 
Two in the tangled business of the world, 
Two in the liberal offices of life, 
Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss 
Of science, and the secrets of the mind : 
Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more : — 
And, everywhere, the broad and bounteous Earth 
Should bear a double growth of those rare souls, 
Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world." 

This princess protests, not in these words, but virtually, 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 117 

that " woman is undeveloped man " — undeveloped; not by 
the intention of nature, but by the stunting influence of 
the position assigned to her in the order of society. 
Liberate her from this position — give her free scope for 
growth— and she will develop and become equal to and 
like the man, in all the essential elements of his mental 
nature. So says the princess. The poet, on the other 
hand, speaking through the poem, says, 

" For woman is not undevelopt man 
But diverse." 

The whole poem is the story of the break down of the 
fictitious manhood the princess is trying to create for her- 
self and her companions, and the irresistible outgrowth of 
the woman nature — the unconquerable assertion of its 
distinctive features. As long and in as far as the fictitious 
manhood seems to hold, the result is almost or quite gro- 
tesque ; as womanhood reasserts itself, beauty and harmony 
take the place of grotesqueness. Not that the discontent 
of the princess with woman's place and level was absurd — 
the absurdity lay in attempting to raise her by assimilating 
her nature to that of the man. The ideal man and the 
ideal woman are peers ; but they are of different orders, 
though of equal grades. 



118 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

I said grotesque, yet the word scarcely does justice to 
the magnificence of the princess's conception. Her under- 
taking is no whim ; it is a passion with her ; and she longs 
after the liberation and the elevation of her sex with a 
fervour that belongs to perfect faith and the highest bent 
of enthusiasm. But as all incongruity is grotesque, so the 
man-aims and the woman- heart struggling together as they 
do in all her speech, cannot fail to have the effect of gro- 
tesqueness, or, say, to dash a touch of grotesque through 
the whole picture. One line of the poem expresses it 
absolutely (a line, by the way, which is the best ex- 
ample of satirical humour in all our poet's writings). It 
occurs where the rescue of the princess from the stream is 
narrated, and runs, 

" And bearing in my left 
The weight of all the hopes of half the world." 

Through much turmoil the princess struggles to carry on 
her scheme. It breaks down, nevertheless — breaks down 
while she still stands firm upon the ground she has taken. 
But, at last, she, too, breaks down, and her woman's nature 
asserts itself, and through love she discovers that the 
highest womanhood consists, not in an independent equality 
with man, but in the equality of perfect harmony. 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. t 119 

" Not like to like, but like in difference." 

And this, which is true for womanhood, is no less true for 
total humanity, which then will have attained its fruition 
when by the union and harmony of man, fully developed 
as man, with woman fully developed as woman, the whole 
humanity shall he bodied forth. For man is not humanity, 
but one aspect of humanity ; and woman is not humanity, 
but one aspect of humanity ; and humanity is manhood 
plus womanhood. As each advances, it will catch as an 
undertone the spirit of the other, while its own character- 
istic grows not less but more distinct, save again it could 
happen, as once in One it has been seen, that in the same 
being the total humanity of manhood and womanhood 
should be represented. Failing this, 

" Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 
The man be more of woman, she of man. 

Till at the last she set herself to man 

Like perfect music unto noble words ; 

And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 

Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers, 

Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 

Self-reverent each, and reverencing each, 

Distinct in individualities, 

But like each other, ev'n as those who love." 



120 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

The Princess is an Idyll and a Philosophical Poem, and 
in accordance with its double character, it fulfils a double 
duty. As an idyll, it stands side by side with the Gar- 
dener's Daughter and the others, singing purely and nobly 
of love, and helping to sanctify emotion in our hearts. As 
a Philosophical Poem it is a contribution to the much-dis- 
cussed question of the true aims and means in the education 
and development of woman. Our age is largely trying 
the experiment of the Princess, though, confessedly, unlike 
the Princess, in fashion altogether unheroic. Mistakes 
end in failures ; unheroic mistakes, unhappily, in unheroic 
failures. Our experiments in woman-educating are not 
prospering, and this chiefly because we are ignorant of, or 
indifferent to the distinctive ideal of womanhood. To help 
us to a better understanding of this first condition of our 
work, the Princess would be very valuable. 

The three poems, You ask me why, Of old sat Freedom, and 
Love thou thy land, form a group of political poems — the 
only ones Tennyson has written. The third would make a 
very excellent statesman's creed or practical guide — with 
its wise liberalism, and its wise conservatism, without both 
of which no modern statesman can be great, or useful to his 
aa:e. That verse — 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 121 

" Make knowledge circle with the winds ; 
But let her herald Reverence, fly 
Before her to whatever sky 
Bear seed of men and growth of minds," 

looks, at first sight, strange in the heart of a political poem ; 
yet, truly, it affords the key to the whole difficulty of 
popular rights, and the political franchise. The natural 
right of every man to take part in the rule of the society 
of which he is a member rests in abeyance, is latent, until 
developed by the acquired qualifications of his mind and 
character ; and it is knowledge that fits him intellectually, 
and reverence that fits him morally for this exercise of his 
right. I shall have more to say upon this matter here- 
after. 

The Two Voices is a philosophical poem of the strictest 
kind. It is one sustained argument, or a series of argu- 
ments upon the same subject, from the beginning to almost 
the close. Yet, as I have before remarked, it is full of 
luscious poetry. It would be difficult to find another 
poem in which a conception so purely intellectual is 
clothed with such richness of imagination and imagery. 
The argument is concerning suicide. To feel the full force 
of it, it is necessary to separate oneself, for the time, from 



122 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

all that Christianity has taught us concerning the duty of 
patient endurance and the absolute surrender of the human 
will to the divine, concerning the lovingness of God, and 
the " soul of good in things evil," and to take up the posi- 
tion of, say, a high-souled Greek whose life was full 
enough of sadness and suffering to have become a burden 
to him. From such a situation the argument starts. The 
sinfulness of suicide is out of the question— that is not 
showable except on Christian grounds. The question of 
the poem is whether on natural grounds suicide could be 
defended, or must be condemned. 

It will be observed that there is no attempt to pronounce 
against suicide by calling it self-murder. Suicide is not 
self-murder. Murder does not consist in simply killing 
even another. It is the hate, the malice, that lies behind 
the act that constitutes it murder. To kill a man by accident, 
to shoot him in battle, to strike him under sudden pro- 
vocation without intent to kill, yet killing him, these are 
not murder. It is the malice that converts the act of 
killing into murder. This, of course, will be granted. 
But no man ever killed himself out of malice— because he 
hated himself; and so to call self-killing self-murder is 
simply a misuse of terms. Men, in modern times, if 
they do not kill themselves under extremities of suffering, 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 123 

abstain, either because, even so, they prefer life to the 
loss of it, or because they are afraid of the consequences, 
or because they have understood that it is in direct viola- 
tion of that filial spirit towards God which is Chris- 
tianity. 

Was the Greek, ignorant of Christianity, reduced to the 
lower motives, or were there worthier motives also for 
him? That is the question of the poem. I venture to 
give the steps of the argument, because it seems to me 
exhaustive, and especially worthy of careful study : — 

Voice. You are so miserable, why not die ? 

Man. This being of mine is too wonderful to be wantonly destroyed. 

Voice. A dragon-fly is more wonderful than you. 

I have found that this step of the argument is commonly 
misunderstood. The voice is thought to urge the hope of 
a resurrection. That this is not the meaning is evident 
from the next answer of the man, which would, then, have 
no pertinence whatever, and also from the fact that, 
farther on in the poem, the Voice scoffs at the notion of 
a future life at all. The argument really stands thus : — 

Voice. A dragon-fly is more wonderful than you. 
Man. Not so. The pre-eminence of man lies in his intellectual and 
moral nature. 



124 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

Voice. You are proud. Let me grant that you are higher than the 
fly and some other beings. Think you there are not many other heings 
in the universe higher than you. 

Voice, resumes. Moreover you are but one of many. There would 
be plenty of men like you left. 

Man. No two beings are altogether alike. 

Voice. Even so, among millions of shades of difference, will your 
particular shade be missed ? 

Man. You cannot know. 

This is the end of the first argument. It might seem weak 
on the side of the man ; but it is not so. The strength 
of the temptation depends upon the truth of those things 
insinuated by the voice. The proof of the truth is 
challenged and is not produced. It is enough. Even a 
doubt upon this point would forbid suicide to a noble 
mind. A new argument commences : — 

Voice. You are so miserable and so impotent, 'twere better to die. 

Man. Matters may mend. If I die, I lose that chance. 

Voice. What are the means of cure ? 

Man (Not answering directly). If I should die, I should leave 
beautiful nature, and the knowledge of human progress. These would 
continue, while I was absent and ignorant. 

Voice. But this must happen some day, in any case. 

Man. Human progress is unceasing. If I bide my time, I see some 
of it. 

Voice. The progress of man is so slow, so slight, compared with the 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 125 

infinite distance of the goal, that thousands of years would not suffice 
to show you any appreciable advance. How much less will some 
thirty years avad. Moreover you cannot watch and see even this 
fancied progress for want of health of body and calm of mind. 

Man (Again changing the argument). Men will call me a coward 
if I die rather than wait and suffer. 

Voice. Much more a coward are you, then, to live ; for, so, you are 
twice a coward ; you fear the pain of life, yet dare not escape, because 
you fear the scorn of men. Moreover, does love so bind you to men, 
that you need care for their scorn ? Will it disturb your rest ? In 
truth, they will not scorn you ; they will forget you. 

Man. That men will forget me, is small inducement to put myself 
out of their sight. Kather it provokes me to live, and recall the hope I 
once had of compelling them to remember me by useful and noble 
deeds done on their behalf. 

Voice. Such dreams are common to youth. They pass as age 
advances. They are not worth preserving. Man cannot really do 
anything worth doing, or know anything worth knowing. The end 
of life is disappointment. Death is the remedy. 

Man. That men can do and know is certain ; for men have done and 
known. 

Voice. Perhaps. Or they thought so. Some men have happy 
temperaments. From such come happy phantasies. 

Man (Changing the argument once more). This life is bad. Should 
I seek death as I am, the next, so entered, may be worse— its suffering 
deeper and more fixed. 

Voice. Ponder the dead man, and tell me do you find evidence of any 
new life to fear. 

Man. You cannot prove the dead are dead. It is true that the 



126 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

outward signs imply it. Why then do we not hold those signs con- 
clusive ? The fact that thus, against all outer reasons, we doubt, is 
evidence for the new life. The heart of man forebodes a mystery. He 
has conceived an Eternity. He conceives, too, the ideal, which here 
he nowhere finds. He sees, dimly, a Divine Father and a Purpose 
working through the universe. He feels in himself a higher nature 
struggling with his lower being. These doubts and questionings must 
have answers somewhere. You cannot answer them. Counter doubts 
will not do it, for the first doubts would still remain. Thus by doubts 
you have assailed me, and by doubts you are foiled. 

Voice (After a pause in the argument). You had a beginning ; you 
sprung from nothing. Why should you not have an end, and pass to 
nothing ? 

Man. You do not show that to begin necessarily implies to end. But 
suppose I grant it, I do not know that at birth I began to be. Each 
being may have many phases of life. I do not remember my last stage 
of being — the change of state may involve forgetfulness. Moreover, 

" As here we find in trances, men 
Forget the dream that happens, then 
Until they fall in trance again ;" 

so should my next stage of being be like the last, I may then remember 
that last, though forgetting it in this. Or I may have fallen from a 
higher state of being, and the yearnings after the noble and the beauti- 
ful which flit through my mind, may be traces of that higher life. Or 
I may have risen through and from lower forms, and then I might well 
have forgotten, for even here we forget the days of early immaturity. 
Or I may have existed as an unbodied essence, and then I must needs 
be incapable of memory ; 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 127 

" For memory, dealing but with time, 
And he with matter, should she climb 
Beyond her own material prime 7" 

Moreover there do haunt me what seem like reminiscences of a past life, 
as if what now seems new were not really new, but had been seen or 
done before. 

Voice. " The still voice laughed. ' I talk/ said he, 
' Not with thy dreams ! Suffice it thee, 
Thy pain is a reality.' " 

Man. Yes, but you have missed your mark, and have not tricked |me 
into death by one-sided falsehoods. No living being ever truly longed 
for death. It is more life that we want, not death. 

The battle is over, and the man has won the victory upon 
the ground chosen by the tempting voice. By the pleas 
common to all worthy humanity, suicide is irrational, weak, 
contemptible. The man is victorious, but not the less is 
he desolate ; 

" I ceased and sat as one forlorn." 

But then comes the second voice whispering Christian 
hopes ; and the sight of human love and worship, and the 
happy glory of nature bring light and comfort to the 
desolate heart that, without light and comfort, had battled 
for the right. 

There is one instance of suicide in Ancient History that 



128 A STUDY Oi TENNYSON. 

upon non-Christian grounds could scarcely, if at all, be 
held blameworthy. This is the instance of Hannibal's 
death. A modern, to commit suicide, must either, for 
the time being, have ceased to be sane, or must have 
abjured Christianity. Amongst ancients, Nero, Hasdrubal, 
the brother of Hannibal, and Hannibal himself will serve 
as typical instances. The first destroyed himself because 
he was afraid to face the pain in store for him — this man 
is of the lowest type. Hasdrubal ended his life in pas- 
sionate disappointment at his defeat and the failure of his 
expedition, shrinking from the shame, and, perhaps, also, 
from the sight of the troubles of his country, and the pain 
of his brother at the overthrow of his cherished hopes. 
This was weakness, but not altogether unworthy weakness ; 
rather the weakness of a noble nature. Hannibal had 
devoted his life with unexampled fidelity of consecration 
to the deliverance of his country from the yoke of Eome ; 
he had struggled for victory, he had bowed honestly before 
defeat, he had undertaken the pettiest services, and had 
exposed his great head to contumely from meanest men ; 
and, now, having exhausted the world in his search for the 
means of some new effort, he felt that his work was done. 
But the malignant hate of the Romans would not let him 
rest; his work was over, and safety and peace there was 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 129 

none for liim in the world. So he retired from the world. 
If ever suicide could fit the character of a great man, this 
is the instance. I do not think that on any but Christian 
grounds this death could be held unworthy of even the 
supreme name of Hannibal. 

The Palace of Art is another great philosophical poem ; 
but whereas The Two Voices is sustained argument from 
beginniDg to end, in this there is no touch of argument ; 
there the truth is exhibited logically, here pictorially, as I 
may say. 

There is a man prosperous, and of high intellectual and 
imaginative powers. He sets before him one object — to be 
happy. To this end he chooses " a huge crag platform " 
isolated from the abodes of men, and having no means of 
communication therewith ; and here he erects his " Palace 
of Art." He resolves to live alone and calm, unmoved by 
the interests or the sorrows of the race of men. 

His palace is an epitome of all forms of beauty and art. 
From a golden gallery round the roof a mighty range of 
land is seen, while the cloisters around the four courts 
of the palace are rich with the murmurous music of waters, 
and fragrance of incense and light that enters through 
windows of " slow-flaming:, crimson fire." 



130 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

The palace is full of corridors that lead from room to 
room, and in the rooms are hung numberless pictures, 
whose subjects are culled from the choicest beauties of 
nature and poesy. Thus, 

" One seemed all dark and red — a tract of sand, 
And some one pacing there alone, 
Who paced for ever in a glimmering land, 
Lit with a low large moon." 

Or from among the art subjects, 

" Or in a clear-walled city on the sea, 
Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair 
Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily ; 
An angel looked at her." 

There are towers to the palace, and in these are placed 
great bells that swing of themselves, producing silver 
music, and paintings of strong men in thought and poetry, 
and many other emblems, suggestive of power and 
supremacy, separation and completeness. In these towers 
he delights to sit, and contemplate the common world 
. below, saying, 

" All these are mine, 

And let the world have peace or wars, 

"Tis one to me." 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 131 

At last the climax of his self-assertion is reached, and he 

says, 

" I take possession of man's mind and deed, 
I care not what the sects may brawl, 
I sit as God holding no form of creed, 
But contemplating all." 

This mere sketch gives no idea of the pictorial richness of 
the poem, which is indeed marvellous. But what is the 
moral significance of the picture? Some men choose to be 
happy by indulging their lower appetites and tastes. This 
man is not one of these. In him is the highest refinement. 
It is in beauty that he seeks his happiness, and that beauty 
is of no low order, but the beauty of nature, of high art and 
noble thought. With nature and the giants of mankind 
he seeks to dwell ; for the race of men he feels only scorn. 
Of living men he loves none, pities none. In him are 
embodied the highest refinement of thought and imagina- 
tion and absolute g selfishness. Is he noble or con- 
temptible ? He would scorn to the dust a being in whom 
coarseness and selfishness were embodied, holding himself 
the antipodes of such an one. Is he so, or is he kin to 
him? Beauty is his god, refinement his highest virtue. 
Of humility and self-denial, of sympathy and pity he 
knows nothing. Is he noble or contemptible? Intel- 



132 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

lectually lie is the antipodes of the selfish boor, morally is 
he not akin to him ? 

It will not be denied that one tendency of civilization is 
to produce such characters as this which is here idealized. 
The worship of refinement grows upon us. Is it true 
worship, or idolatry ? Of refinement, as such, no word but 
good. But I think that refined selfishness is a civilized 
devil. Every age has its devil-worship ; this is one phase 
of the devil-worship of our age, and perhaps of all highly- 
civilized ages. 

This selfishness grows out of want of sympathy — such 
an one would not be selfish towards his intellectual equals, 
perhaps — and the want of sympathy, deepening, often- 
times, into contempt and scorn, grows in some sort out of 
high culture. Not only the pleasures of men, but their 
sorrows, not only their sorrows, but their hopes and their 
creeds, are apt to be looked upon by the highly cultivated 
man as phenomena of a lower order of being, and thus he 
comes to think of himself as a sort of god. So also thought 
Lucifer, and in truth these two are kin. It is a point to be 
insisted upon, because it is a danger common to all those 
who are striving after that cultivation of their powers which 
is one of the highest happinesses of life. Of course this 
Lucifer spirit is not the inevitable companion of high cul- 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 133 

ture. In some, the growth of every power of the soul 
seems but to intensify their sympathy with their fellow 
men, not awakening in them pity that shines down as from 
a higher level of heing, hut drawing them into such closer 
brotherhood of love^as can override all distinctions, whether 
of the outer or the inner life. Where this is the effect of 
culture, there culture is doing its true work upon the 
moral as well as upon the intellectual nature ; where this 
result is not produced, there the moral nature is stultified 
in proportion as the intellectual nature advances. It is 
Lucifer gods that look down in scorn, or, in softer 
moments, in scornful pity ; the love of the great God is so 
near to brotherhood, that the Incarnation must needs be 
accomplished to testify to the fact. 

The sequel of the poem shows the Nemesis and the cure. 
After three years of prosperity the very isolation and self- 
centredness which he had made his glory becomes his 
punishment, 

" Deep dread and loathing of her solitude 
Fell on her," (his soul) 

at which he scorns himself and then laughs at his self- 
scorn. Weird, haunting fears turn the palace into a 
ghastly tomb. 



134 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

" Back on herself her serpent pride had curled ; 
' No voice,' she shrieked in that lone hall, 
' No voice breaks through the stillness of this world : 
One deep, deep silence all !' " 

The thought of time and of eternity grows dreadful to 
him ; loveless, comfortless, he who seated himself above 
sympathy, perishes for want of sympathy. The universe 
is a great tomb to him which he alone inhabits. Then 
comes repentance. 

" Make me a cottage in the vale 
"Where I may mourn and pray." • 

And then comes the brighter hope beyond. 

" Yet pull not down my palace towers that are 
So lightly, beautifully built : 
Perchance I may return with others there, 
When I have purged my guilt."_ 

Not in the love of beauty lay the evil. High culture is 
not a sin. Eefinement and love make the true man, and a 
" Palace of Art " built for himself and men his brothers 
should be a noble monument to the greatness of a man. 

The Vision of Sin is a poem the interpretation of which 
it is not easy to read. It opens with a glowing picture of 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 135 

sensuous beauty and enjoyment. But the sensuousness is 
low — ministering rather to the excitement of passion than 
to the satisfaction of the sense of beauty. In the midst of 
this picture are many human figures, but chiefly one — a 
new-comer — a youth, and 

" He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown, 
But that his heavy rider kept him down." 

This image is doubtless borrowed from the " Phgedrus " of 
Plato — and understanding it so, we learn that the young 
man was one of high capacities, but of low aims — fitted for 
a spiritual life, but deliberately choosing the sensual. 
The solemn beauty of God, and the slow-coming but 
inevitable Nemesis descending from the heavens, alike fail 
to raise him or to wain him. 

" I saw that every morning, far withdrawn 
Beyond the darkness and the cataract, 
God made himself an awful rose of dawn 
Unheeded : and detaching, fold by fold, 
From those still heights, and, slowly drawing near, 
A vapour, heavy, hueless, formless, Cold, 
Came floating on for many a month and year, 
Unheeded." 

The vision changes ; the young man has grown old ; the 
vengeance has partly fallen. All the sensuous, beautiful 



136 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

surroundings have vanished; low and coarse companions 

and circumstances have taken their place. There is a 

horse still, but one altogether wingless. All that power 

of voluptuous enjoyment is gone ; the old man asks for 

wine, but it is wine simply, a stimulant, no more. He 

says — 

" I remember, when I think, 
That my youth was half-divine." 

For to the palled appetite of the sensualist, the keener sen- 
sibilities of youth, tinged as they always are with some 
idealizing touch, even though sensual, too, may well 
seem as "half-divine." To the sensualist grown old, 
there is left but coarse appetite, at most ; oftentimes not 
even that. From this old man, self-respect has fled, and 
belief in all the higher qualities and the higher aims 
of men. 

" Drink to lofty hopes that cool — 

Visions of a perfect state : 

Drink we, last, the public fool, 

Frantic love and frantic hate." 
****** 

" Virtue !— to be good and just— 
Every heart, when sifted well, 
Is a clot of warmer dust, 

Mixed with cunning sparks of hell." 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 137 

The meaning of thus much of the poem is clear. A life 
of sensuous, or sensual, pleasure, in youth, is avenged by 
the loss of even that and the incapacity for anything 
higher as age comes on. But towards the end of the 
monologue of the old man a touch of something else shows 
itself. He grows hitter, and scornful of himself as well as 
others, and even despair seems to glimmer out from his 
talk. And then he ceases, and the vision changes again. 
The end has come, death and decay spreads over all, and 
the solemn silent beauty of God alone remains. Then two 
voices are heard ; one pleads for the old man that his sins 
were those of sense, and that sense has avenged the sin. 
He did not indulge malignant passions, did not use his 
higher nature to pervert it, but neglected it only, and 
lived for the lower nature. The higher nature remains, 
though all unused and undeveloped, yet not slain by crimes 
of malice. Thus seems to plead the first voice. But the 
second voice answers — 

" The crime of sense became 
The crime of malice, and is equal blame." 

He who will live for his lower nature alone, must needs 
be guilty of sins against the higher nature ; it is not per- 
mitted to him simply to ignore it. Crimes of sense must 
lead to crimes of malice through the channel of selfishness, 



138 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

and these, then, are not less blameworthy that they so 
arose. The pleading voice urges again — 

" He had not wholly quenched his power;" 

there was still left in hirn the perception of, and the 
capacity for, higher things : had it not been so, he would 
have been content in his lowness ; but he was bitter and 
scornful of himself, and by this it was manifest that con- 
science was not wholly dead in him. 

" At last I heard a voice upon the slope 
dry to the summit, ' Is there any hope ?' " 

And in that question is expressed the limit of human 
knowledge, and the suspense of human anxiety. Concern- 
ing millions of wasted lives that lie decaying in the 
hollow, nobler men who are half-way up the slope, cry to 
the summit " Is there any hope ?" 

" To which an answer pealed from that high land, 
But in a tongue no man could understand ; 
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn, 
God made himself an awful rose of dawn." 

The answer comes, but it is unintelligible — a sealed 
answer to human wisdom. But as it peals, the dawn of 
God rises in the far distance, and the light thereof may 



PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS. 139 

seem to mingle with, the eager question of man, as the 
last word lingers upon his tongue, and the light and the 
hope commingling may, perchance, bridge the way to a 
joyful interpretation of the mystic answer that pealed from 
the heights of God. 

It is manifest that these two poems — The Palace of Art 
and The Vision of Sin, are companion poems ; they portray 
the antipodes of selfish pleasure-seeking. In both, the 
pleasure sought is sensuous ; but in the first the sensuous- 
ness is allied to elevated thought, and high imagination ; 
in the second it is closely allied to sensuality, and rapidly 
merges entirely into it. In both, the end is sorrow, 
self-scorn and despair — these so much keener in the first 
than the second, because the nature sinned against was 
higher to begin with, and the very sin has tended to keep 
alive the sensibilities of that nature. They are both of 
them poems conveying lessons which, though not novel, are 
yet of the deepest importance, and under such forms as 
give them a penetrating power which under ordinary forms 
they would altogether fail to have. 



140 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

PHIL OS OPHICAL P OEMS— Continued. 



En i$tem0rtam. 



Passing by two or three smaller Philosophical Poems which 
call for no special remark, we come to the greatest of the 
group, and, indeed, to the noblest of all our poet's works. To 
thousands, this is a sort of sacred book, and it dwells in 
their hearts in a place quite by itself. Deeper than all 
praise or fame, is the glory of having stirred the hearts and 
quickened the spirits of thousands of men to whom not 
many of the words spoken in their ears at present stand 
for much. This our poet has done in this his greatest 
poem. 

As most of my readers will quite well know, this poem 
was written in memory of Arthur Henry Hallam, son of 
the historian Henry Hallam, and chief friend of the poet, 



ZZV MEMORIAM. ' 141 

who also was his chief friend. The friendship seems to 
have been an equal one, which so many friendships are 
not. Arthur Hallam was born in Bedford Place, London, 
on the 1st of February 1811. The words of In Memoriam, 

" Dark house, by which once more I stand, 
Here in the long unlovely street ; 
Doors, where my heart was wont to beat 
So quickly, waiting for a hand," 

probably refer to that house. His education was of a very 
irregular, though, as it seems, of a very excellent sort ; as 
a consequence, his culture and scholarship were high and 
extensive, but lay, for the most part, somewhat out of the 
beaten track. His powers and his character need not to be 
spoken of, since In Memoriam is written. In October, 1828 
(having been previously entered on the boards of Trinity 
College), he went down to reside at Cambridge. The friend- 
ship between him and Tennyson must have been formed 
almost immediately, for in 1830 they were very intimate, 
and proposed to jointly publish a volume of poems. At the 
wish of Henry Hallam, the father of Arthur, this plan 
was given up. Tem^son's poems were published alone 
that same year, and Arthur Hallam's are to be found in the 
" Eemains " published by his father after his death. That 



142 ' A STUDY OF TENNTSON. 

the friendship must have commenced as immediately as 
we think is shown also in In Memoriam, Canto xiii., for 
Arthur died on the fifteenth of September 1833, less than 
five years from the time of his going up to Cambridge. 
He took his degree, and left Cambridge in January 1832, 
and, forthwith, commenced the study of law in London, 
having been entered on the boards of the Inner Temple. 
During all his life, his health was delicate and fluctuating, 
and a uniform seriousness and frequent melancholy cha- 
racterized his mind. This was due, not less to the weak- 
ness of his body, than to the earnestness of his character. 
He was especially subject to all such ailments as are inci- 
dent to imperfect circulation. In the beginning of August, 
he accompanied his father to Germany. On the fifteenth 
of September he was at Vienna, and there " a sudden rush 
of blood to the head put an instantaneous end to his life." 

" God's finger touched him, and he slept." 

" The mysteriousness of such a dreadful termination to 
a disorder generally of so little importance, and in this 
instance of the slightest kind, has been diminished by an 
examination, which showed a weakness of the cerebral 
vessels, and a want of sufficient energy in the heart. 
Those whose eyes must long be dim with tears, and whose 



IN MEMORIAM. 143 

hopes on this side the tomb are broken down for ever, may- 
cling, as well as they can, to the poor consolation of be- 
lieving that a few more years wonld, in the usual chances 
of humanity, have severed the frail union of his graceful 
and manly form with the pure spirit that it enshrined." 

The body was brought home from Vienna, and buried 
on the third of January 1834- in the chancel of Clevedon 
Church in Somersetshire. 

I believe there exists no record of the life of Arthur 
Hallam save this brief memoir prefixed by his father to 
the " Eemains " that he published ; I believe there exists 
no record of the friendship and intercourse between Arthur 
Hallam and Alfred Tennyson save In Memoriam. It is 
enough. 

That the friendship was, as I - said, an equal one, is at 
least partly shown by the review of his friend's poems 
published in 1830, written by Arthur Hallam for the 
Englishman's Magazine. A portion of this review is in_ 
eluded among the " Eemains." 



S 



In the paper to follow hereafter, entitled " A few days 
with the Poet Laureate," I shall touch upon certain refer- 
ences to places which the poem contains. The following 



144 



A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 



table points out certain chronological markings, expressing, 
as I conceive, not the times when the various parts of the 
poem were written, but the periods in the history of his 
sorrow upon which the poet's mind dwelt in writing 

them. 

From Death to Burial. 
Christmas Eve, No. 1. 
Anniversary of Death, No, 1. 



Cantos i. to xxi. 

xxvni. to xxx. 

LXXI. 
LXXVII. 

xcvni. . 
cm., crv. 



cv. 



Christmas Eve, No. 2. 
Anniversary of Death, No. 2. 
Christmas Eve, "No. 3. 
New Year. 
His Birthday. 



But the great interest of the study of In Memoriam lies 
in the effort to trace the mental and spiritual history set 
forth in the poem. To this task we briefly address our- 
selves. 

The beautiful dedicatory poem seems to be a confession 
of faith, more deep than manifold. The sovereignty of 
God ; the hope of immortality arising out of the character 
of God ; the mystic meeting of the divine and human 
natures in the person of Christ ; the incomprehensible 
freedom of the human will, and the highest use of that 
freedom — a voluntary surrender to the will of God ; the 
littleness and evanescence of human systems of thought 



IN MEMORIAM. 145 

and truth; the limits of knowledge, its divine origin 
nevertheless, but the need of reverence to complete with 
it the harmony of spiritual music ; the futility of the 
thought of merit towards God ; the nobler state of the 
dead ; the hope of divine pardon and teaching ; these are 
its high themes. By this inscription on the threshold, he 
who essays to enter may learn that, not less to Eeligion 
than to Art and to Human Love, is this temple dedicated. 

Canto the first (which seems to have been written later 
than those that follow it) strikes the key-note of the poem 
— the holiness of the grief which grows out of love ; its 
power to elevate the nature of the mourner, and the danger 
of killing love and the possibility of nobleness, in the effort 
to escape from grief. 

" Let Love clasp Grief, lest both be drowned ; 
Let darkness keep her raven gloss ; 
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, 
To dance with deatb, to beat the ground ; 
" Than that the victor Hours should scorn 
The long result of love, and boast, 
' Behold the man that loved and lost, 
But all he was is overworn.' " 

Men prate of the duty of resignation, and the sinfulness of 
unmeasured sorrow ; alas, it rather seems that resignation, 

L 



146 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

in this matter, is to most men a duty all too easy, and 
sorrow is apt to be kept within strictest measure. A heart- 
whole love, that death turns into a life-long grief, is a sight 
to reverence rather than rebuke. 

Cantos ir. to viii. seem to express that confusion of heart 
and mind which characterizes the first hours of a great 
sorrow. The blow stuns first, the pain comes later. You 
shall know tender-hearted people who seem to themselves 
to have suddenly lost all power of feeling, when some 
great grief has fallen upon them. Cold, weary indifference 
seems to be their sole feeling. But then, presently, as 
memory awakens, the pain throbs in upon them, till the 
whole heart becomes flooded with woe. So it runs through 
these seven poems. As in Maud the shell holds the atten- 
tion of the lover, so here in n. the yew-tree plays the 
same part. Then comes the gradual awakening to self- 
consciousness in in. and iv., the sad look-out on the 
universal pain in vi., and, at last, the coming right home 
to a sense of personal loss in vn. In viii. is given the 
mournful justification of In Memoriam : 

" So seems it in my deep regret, 
O my forsaken heart, with thee, 
And this poor flower of poesy, 
Which, little cared for, fades not yet. 



JiV MEMORIAM. 147 

" But since it pleased a vanished eye, 
I go to plant it on his tomb, 
That, if it can, it there may bloom, 
Or dying, there at least may die." 

From. ix. to xvn., through a series of exquisite delineations, 
the poem follows the ship that is bringing home "lost 
Arthur's loved remains." They are all too vivid and too 
transparent to need any comment. Every one who has 
lost a friend who had also been a companion must feel the 
wonderful truthfulness of xiv. Though it is out of place 
to do so here, I cannot help remarking upon the richness 
of the symbolism in the two lines, 

" Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 
The chalice of the grapes of God ;" (x.) 

and how they bring before the mind, not merely the chancel 
of a church, but all its holiest associations, and so its most 
inviting fitness as a resting-place for the dead. 

In xviii., the body is brought home ; in six., it is buried 
by the side of the Severn, in the chancel of Clevedon 
Church. There sitting, as it were, by the grave, his 
sorrow flooding and receding from his heart with the 
ebbing and the flowing tide, he utters his grief at the times 



148 ' A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

of ebb. And when some rebuke him, he justifies his 
sorrow and the expression of it by the character of him 
who is gone, and the impossibility of silence (xxi.). All 
utterance of emotion that is genuine is spontaneous ; 
the moment it becomes deliberate it gains a touch of 
insincerity. 

In vn. and vin. the mourner glances back at the past and 
the associations that cling round the memory of his friend. 
Prom xxn. to xxvu. he again returns to the past, counting, 
as it were, his lost treasures, and marking where the thread 
of joy was broken off. But, as he dwells upon the past, he 
perceives that its chief good was not the happiness, great 
though that was, that it brought him, but the nobility. 
And now that he is left alone, it will not suffice that his 
love should remain, there must also remain its ennobling 
power, otherwise life had better cease for him. 

" And if that eye which watches guilt 
And goodness, and hath power to see 
Within the green the mouldered tree, 
And towers fallen as soon as built — 

" Oh, if indeed that eye foresee, 
Or see (in Him is no before), 
In more of life true life no more, 
And Love the indifference to be ; 



IN MEMORIAM. 149 

" Then might I find, ere yet the morn 
Breaks hither over Indian seas, 
That Shadow waiting with the keys, 
To shroud me from my proper scorn." (xxvi.) 

And though, in the past, love brought hirn joy as well as 
nobility, yet the love is still a good, though the joy is 
gone, for its ennobling power remains ; 

" 'Tis better to have loved and lost, 
Than never to have loved at all." 1 (xxvn.) 

So grief steadies herself, and faith recovers her hold when 
she perceives that the uses of love are not lost when the 
object of love is taken away. At the first she had grown 
dumb, and the voice of sorrow only was heard ; 

" The stars, she whispers, blindly run ; 
A web is woven across the sky ; 
From out waste places comes a cry, 
And murmurs from the dying sun." (in.) 

But when she discovers that only joy is dead, and not love, 
nor its fruit of nobility, faith revives, and the seeds of a 
new and holier joy are sown. 

" I hold it true, whate'er befall ; 

I feel it when I sorrow most;"" 

'Tis better to have loved and lost 
" Than never to have loved at all." (xxvn.) 



150 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

This seems to me the first great halting-place in the poem. 
The mourner's nature has righted itself, and, while, as in a 
fickle nature it would do, love has not faded into forgetful- 
ness, yet neither has it hardened into unfaithful bitterness, 
nor degenerated into weak and selfish sorrowing. " The 
far-off interest of tears " is already in some measure grasped. 
He, who, though he has lost, continues still to love ; he in 
whom faith survives, though the poison-breath of deadly 
grief has fallen upon her ; he who has learned to compre- 
hend that love itself is worthless except it bear its proper 
fruits of nobleness ; he already is one of those who 

" rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things." (i.) 

He truly has risen out of self altogether, and is on that 
level from which he may spring into the higher regions of 
universal love and spiritual truth. 

Into this region of spiritual inquiry and truth the poem 
henceforth mounts. It ascends from the personal to the 
universal — not leaving the personal, and so becoming 
merely abstract, but expanding the personal into the 
universal. But all the time the personal lies at the heart 
of the universal, and again and again the universal is con- 
densed down into the personal, and a living love and the 



IN ME AIO EI AM. 151 

yearning of an individual heart are seen to be the centre 
from which those movements after the infinite and the 
eternal start. 

But first come the three poems of Christmas-tide (xxviii., 
xxix., xxx.). It is striking how an intense love regards 
times and seasons, more especially if death has set its 
consecration upon them. The observance of days may 
become a meaningless form, but only when the love that 
gave rise to the observance has vanished, or has faded into 
coldness. In the early church, the necessity for Sabbath 
laws was swept clean away by the felt holiness of the 
Lord's day ; but in these latter days, because our love has 
grown cold, men live again by law rather than by love, 
and so Sabbatarian discussions without number arise. And 
if other, great church days have grown meaningless, it is 
because love for a personal Master has crystallized into 
adherence to a creed, an organization, or, at best, a law. 
When the personal Christ comes again into the hearts of 
men, his days will be holy days and will need no pre- 
scription. 

And to that love which we cherish for our dear dead 
ones, times and seasons are very precious. Marked by 
love, they are sacred halting-places in the journey of life, 



152 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

whereat we spread out our holiest memories, and call from 
behind the veil the living forms that on common days are 
hidden from our sight, and our souls are bathed in the 
light of their beatified love, and we sorrow before them 
over our un worthiness, and wonder that they could ever 
have loved us, yet doubt not that they love us still, and we 
ourselves love them more tenderly and deeply than even 
when they lived by our sides. And all meanness .and sin 
appears baser to us as our hearts grow tender in their 
presence, and it seems to us but one resolve when we 
promise to be ever-faithful to their dear memories, and to 
strive to attune our lives to the holiness of their present 
being. It is on such days as these that we learn how near 
akin are the deepest sorrow and the deepest joy, and how 
near to them both is holiness. 

In xxxi. starts the new range of thought. Until now, 
memory has brought the dead friend bach into his old 
place, or sorrow has contemplated his place empty of him. 
Now faith follows him into his new being, and the con- 
templation of the unseen life begins. It is a beautiful 
thought to take Lazarus as a bridge, so to say, from the 
known to the unknown. He has been in that world, and 
is now again in this, and so the two are brought nearer 



IN MEMOBIAM. 153 

together in hiin. But his lips are sealed. He has brought 
the unknown nearer, but he has not made it known. As 
before, faith, only, can penetrate it. 

xxxii. and xxxiii. form a manifest digression, following 
naturally from xxxi., but lying out of the main line of 
thought. But they are none the less of deep value. Every 
man who ventures to think on religious matters ought to 
weave the spirit of xxxiii. into the very texture of his mind. 

In xxxiv. commences a great series of questionings about 
the future life. Some of these questionings may seem 
artificial and far-fetched to one to whom the future life is 
but a general fact, but they will seem in no way artificial 
or far-fetched to him to whom that life has been made an 
intense and personal reality by the passing into it of one 
who had been the partner of his thoughts and his hopes, 
and whose death blanched all his own interest in the 
present. To such an one, all the questions of this part of 
the poem arise one after another, presenting themselves to 
him not at all as general problems concerning the nature 
of the future life, but rather as agonizing doubts which 
must be answered before he can adjust his thoughts and 
hopes to the new and mysterious relations that have sprung 
up between him and his friend. 

And, first of all, comes the question is there any future 



154 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

life at all ? When the heart is cold and calm, this ques- 
tion is hardly realized, and a logical "yes" *or "no" or 
"perhaps" can be heard as if something far other than the 
key to the whole riddle and holiness and pathos of human 
life were under discussion. But let death step in and 
remove your best-beloved from your side, then " is there 
any future life?" means to you " is there any longer a love 
that gave your life all its highest joy and worth? is there 
any more one in love for whom you found your best help 
in the struggle after goodness ? is there any more a hope 
that can keep the tears you are now shedding from withering 
and hardening your heart for ever ?" This, and not the 
general question of the destiny of the human race, not even 
the question of your own personal destiny, is the intensest 
form of the problem of the future life. 

The poet says that the mystery and darkness of the 
present necessitates a belief in the future. The world is 
an insoluble riddle without the key of Immortality. 
Eeligion has no meaning, patience and virtue are not at 
all worth while, arid suicide is the only wisdom. 

" 'Twere best at once to .sink to peace, 

Like birds the charming serpent draws ; 
To drop head-foremost in the jaws 
Of vacant darkness, and to cease." (xxxiv.) 



IN MEMORIAM. 155 

But at least love might live ? Not so. The nohility of 
love depends upon its belief in its own immortality. To 
think it may die, is at once to die. And 

" If Death were seen 
At first as Death, Love had not been, 
Or been in narrowest working shut." (xxxv.) 

And so as Immortality is the only possible basis for noble 
love, love in its turn becomes a proof of Immortality. 

I cannot refrain from introducing here an argument for 
immortality (one of the most beautiful I have seen, and 
akin to, though differing from the argument of the poem), 
taken from one of the most spiritual-minded of living 
writers. He says, " Thus, if the celestial hope be a 
delusion, we plainly see who are the mistaken. Not the 
mean and grovelling souls, who never reached to so great 
a thought ; not the drowsy and easy natures who are 
content with the sleep of sense through life, and the sleep 
of darkness ever after; not the selfish and pinched of 
conscience, of small thought and smaller love ; — no, these, 
in such case, are right, and the universe is on their miser- 
able scale. The deceived are the great and holy, whom 
all men, ay these very insignificants themselves, revere ; 
the men who have lived for something better than their 



156 • A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

happiness, and spent themselves in the race, or fallen at 

the altar of human good Whom are we to 

revere, and what can we believe, if the inspirations of the 
highest of created natures are but cunningly devised 
fables?" 

To return to In Memoriam. JProm xxxvi. to xxxix. the 
direct continuity of the thought about Immortality is 
broken, xxxvi. is very noble, and xxxix. very tender, but 
we must not linger about them. The last line of xxxix., 

" And thine in undiscovered lands," 

takes up the subject again. The fifth verse of XL. strikes 
the note of the first great terror of bereavement, where the 
lost one has been the mate of heart and mind ; and the 
following poems do battle with this fear. xli. offers a 
tender hope and comfort, but it is not enough for those 
who have been equal mates in life. That would be a 
beautiful relation to assume; but it is not the old one, 
and it is the old relation that we long to retain. The 
thought of xlii., when it first occurs to the mind, seems to 
be full rather of terror than of comfort, but I believe that, 
at bottom, it is not only the truest, but the happiest hope. 
At first we rebel against the thought that our dear dead 
are unconscious of us and of all things ; but as we revolve 



IN MEMOBIAM, 157 

in our minds all the results that might arise from their 
immortal consciousness, we find it more blessed to think 
that they await us, sleeping. 

So important do I hold this to be, that I am constrained 
to set forth the arguments that make it appear to my own 
mind as at the same time the most probable and the 
happiest faith concerning the dead. 

Under ordinary circumstances, consciousness is un- 
doubtedly dependent upon bodily conditions. A blow on 
the head ; a gentle pressure on the exposed surface of the 
brain; fatigue; a temporary sixspension of the heart's 
action; a little vapour of chloroform, arid many other 
causes are able to suspend all consciousness. It would 
appear that consciousness is entirely dependent on bodily 
conditions. Has the spirit a consciousness of its own ? 
There is no reason to think that it has. Those causes 
which suspend consciousness at all, suspend it wholly. 
The consciousness of spiritual facts or conditions is not 
excepted. For the time being the whole man ceases to 
exist, as far as his knowledge of his existence is con- 
cerned. 

At death, the bodily conditions of consciousness are not 
only suspended, they are destroyed. It would appear, 
then, that consciousness must cease— not some partial 



158 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

consciousness of, say, temporal things, but consciousness in 
toto — of things physical ; of things spiritual ; of all things. 
The "body still remains — the matter which formed it, that 
is ; the spirit still remains ; but their union is broken, and 
consciousness, for the time, ceases. 

This view is in completest harmony with the most con- 
stant and most beautiful image by which death is pictured. 
This is real sleep. If the spirit retained conscious activity, 
there would be no meaning in calling death a sleep. 
Moreover, to the feelings there is nothing really repugnant 
in this view. To the dead there is nothing lost — a million 
years of unconsciousness would be no time. The moment 
of sinking to sleep, and the moment of waking, stand next 
each other, though eons roll between. To us who are 
left behind, there is nothing lost; for though tbe thought 
that the dear dead watch ever over us is a beautiful and com- 
forting dream, it is worth parting with for the compensa- 
tions that accrue. For if all the years that separate their 
death day from ours be years of sleep, then when the day 
of awakening comes we shall meet them, all unchanged, 
and the broken thread of life and love may be resumed, 
for the dear dead will not have grown strange to us, nor 
will newer and nobler memories make dark in their eyes 
the visions of the past with us. 



IN MEMOBIAM. 159 

" And love will last as pure and whole 
As when he loved me here in Time, 
And at the spiritual prime, 
Eewaken with the dawning soul." (xlii.) 

And for ourselves we might almost rejoice that they sleep 
rather than watch us. For if, in that clearer light that 
death must bring, their eyes had fallen upon our true 
selves the day they left us, it might well be that love 
should have perished in disappointment. But the sleeping 
time for them may be a time of work for us, and ere the 
day comes that we lie down by their side, the idealizing 
power of their love may in some measure have done its 
work upon our hearts. 

But this view especially commends itself to the judg- 
ment on account of the significance it gives to the doctrine 
of the Resurrection. As long as the spirit is thought of 
as able to live the true life of man by itself — the body 
being a mere, not to say a troublesome, adjunct to the 
spirit — so long the Eesurrection will appear a mystery, 
not only as to its mode, but as to its motive ; a fact to be 
accepted because it is impossible to accept Christianity and 
reject it, but a fact in no way commending itself to the 
judgment as specially significant and good. But as soon 
as it is recognized that man is not a spirit with the accident 



160 A STUDY OF TZNNY30N. 

of a body attached, but a compound being, of body and 
spirit, upon the union of which consciousness, that is, mind, 
depends, then the doctrine of the Resurrection comes to be 
only another name for immortality. Thus, that which is 
perpetually represented as a burden for faith to carry, turns 
out to be the expression of a triumphant accord between 
the doctrine of faith and the highest scientific neces- 
sity. The " Resurrection of the dead" not of the body, 
expresses the real truth. The conscious being of man 
intermits at death. But for the new life of a body it would 
then cease, not intermit. With the new body the con- 
scions life of man is resumed ; the dead are raised. 

To resume. A future life must mean a future conscious- 
ness ; that, of course. But will the consciousness of that 
life be continuous with the consciousness of this? Will 
memory join this to that, and fuse them into one whole ? 
With this question the poems from xliii. to xlvi. deal, and 
the answer of them all is affirmative. I apprehend that 
xliv. must mean more than it appears to mean. It can 
scarcely be intended to claim for this life so small a result 
as the awakening of self-consciousness — the discovery by 
the soul of its own separate being. Bather it must mean 
that the soul shall gather up and carry with it all its. 
experience in the present, all its knowledge of its own 



IJSf MEMORIAM. 161 

properties and powers, and its relations to the universe 
around it. This gives the present life its full meaning ; 
less than this would leave the purpose of life unex- 
plained. And, alas, this explains it in the instance of but 
very few. Some few men there are who before death in 
some measure get to apprehend their own natures and 
characters, their powers and their temptations, their 
strength and their weakness, their relations and their 
duties. To these men, life has been a real education ; they 
have attained to a wide self-knowledge. If this be com- 
plemented, as it assuredly must be, or itself would never 
have been attained, by a corresponding moral growth, these 
men have, so to say, qualified themselves for immortality. 
But how many men there are who seem never to attain 
to this self-knowledge at all, or, attaining it, in measure, 
have less of it at thirty than at twenty, and less at forty 
than at thirty. The cause of this failure is easy to show ; 
it will always be found in deadness of or unfaithfulness to 
conscience. But, however explained, the fact takes away 
all meaning from the lives of these men. This present 
life (which, otherwise, might have been a good animal 
life at all events) has been complicated and spoiled to them 
by their capacity for immortality, while the only clear use 
left to it, as a school in which they might qualify them- 



162 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

selves for immortality, has been missed; they are un- 
qualified for immortality. This is the true riddle of life ; 
not pain, for pain may call out strength ; not sin, for sin 
is oftentimes a stepping-stone to higher virtue; hut that a 
large part of the human race pass through a life which 
seems meaningless except as it subserves this end, without 
(through their own fault or not through their own fault) 
attaining this end — the qualifying of themselves for 
immortality. 

In xlvj. we have a protest against a spurious immor- 
tality taught by many philosophic sects, and, also, often 
found in conjunction with forms of Christian mysticism. 
The doctrine says that human souls are but fragments 
struck off from the universal soul, depending for their 
separateness and sense of individuality upon temporary and 
probably physical conditions. These conditions being 
cancelled, the individuality ceases, and the fragmentary 
human soul is absorbed into the universal soul, human 
consciousness being swallowed up in the divine. Thus 
the man is not annihilated, but becomes immortal by the 
surrender of his personality. The poet thinks this a 
" faith as vague as all unsweet." In truth, for all personal 
purposes it differs only from the doctrine of extinction at 
death in that it is more flattering to the sense of dignity. 



IN MEMORIAM. 163 

In xlvii. and xlviii. another break of continuity occurs. 
This also, like the last, is apologetic and explanatory. The 
subjects are deep and solemn, but blame not the muse for 
her temerity in touching them. She ventures but at the 
impulse of love, and questions rather than answers, seeks 
more to learn than to teach. 

From xlix. to lv. is a wonderful series of poems. Start- 
ing from that universal longing for the nearness of the 
dead which is found in the hearts of all those who worthily 
mourn the worthy, it passes by subtle steps into the 
greatest and most disturbing of the questions that hem in 

our life with mystery and fear The exact links in 

the chain are these. First there is an appeal to the de- 
parted spirit to be near in all the trying moments of life, 
and in the last moment of death. But, the mourner be- 
thinks himself, 

" Do we indeed desire the dead 

Should still be near us at our side ? 

Is there no baseness we would hide ? 

No inner vileness that we dread ?' ' (l.) 

Will he not love me less should he see me so clearly? 
But the answer is ; ' no ; death that brings clearer vision, 
brings also fuller wisdom, and deeper faith and tenderer 



164 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

charity. The dead shall look me through and through." 
" But I cannot even love thee as I ought," the mourner 
complains. " Still," the spirit replies, " thou canst not 
move me from thy side. No soul attains to its ideal here 
and at once. Be patient. The fruition comes ' when 
Time hath sundered shell from pearl.' " (li.) 

What, then, are the " flecks of sin " a part of the need- 
ful preparation for the higher ranges of virtue ? Is it by 
faltering steps we mount the hill? Perhaps. But let 
this truth, if truth it be, be said to him who has climbed 
the hill, and who looks back upon the way he has traversed, 
not told to him who has yet the hill to climb. The victor 
shaming over his weak blows, may be told that even they 
helped to win the battle ; but he who has yet the struggle 
before him must be urged to blows of unfaltering might. 
The philosophy which finds the seeds of holiness often- 
times even in sin must be wholly retrospective ; if it be 
prospective it is a lie and a snare. 

" Hold thou the good : define it well : 
For fear divine Philosophy- 
Should push beyond her mark, and be 
Procuress to the lords of Hell." (lii.) 

But rising above the individual — whether the worn veteran 
who has to be comforted, or the young soldier who has to 



IH MEMORIAM. 165 

be incited to deeds of noble courage — rising to tbe general 
problem of tbe relation of evil to good ; wbat sball we 
say? 

" Oh, yet we trust that, somehow, good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 

" That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete. 



" Behold, we know not anything ; 
I can but trust that good shall fall 
At last — far off — at last, to all, 
And every winter change to spring. 

" So runs my dream : but what am I ? 
An infant crying in the night : 
An infant crying for the light : 
And with no language but a cry." (Lin.) 

Tbis bope — comes it not from tbe most godlike part of 
our nature ? " Are God and Nature tben at strife ?" For 
Nature seems to teacb a different lesson. Tbe type sbe 
cares for, but of tbe single life sbe seems wbolly prodigal. 
" Of fifty seeds, sbe often brings but one to bear." Con- 



166 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

sidering this, and the secret meaning that might seem to 
lie under it, 

" I falter where I firmly trod, 

And falling, with my weight of cares, 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs, 
That slope through darkness up to God ; 

" I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 
And faintly trust the larger hope." (liv.) 

" Careful of the type " is Nature ? Not even so ! 

" She cries ' a thousand types are gone : 
I care for nothing, all shall go.' " (lv.) 

And so rises the agony of the doubt. Is man, too, one of 
the types that shall go ? 

' " Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, 
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, 
"Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer ; 

" Who trusted God was love indeed 
And love Creation's final law." (lv.) 

If this were so, then is he the harshest note in all the cruel 
discord of Nature. 



IN MEMOBIAM. 167 

" life as futile then as frail ! 

O for thy voice to soothe and bless ! 
"What hope of answer or redress ? 
Behind the veil, behind the veil." (lv.) 

It is true that Nature does lend evil dreams; that the 
mystery of our own hearts and of the sad world around us 
heaps up the dreadful doubt ; and the doubt we cannot 
solve, and the dread we cannot wholly shake off; yet we 
believe in a hope lying deeper than the dread, and we 
think that the doubt shall some day be solved. But the 
hope is unseen, and the solution is yet afar off, for they 
are " behind the veil." 

This seems to me the drift and the connexion of these 
seven wonderful poems. Before passing on, I cannot 
refrain from noticing the exquisite naturalness of the 
second line of the last verse I have quoted. In the midst 
of the heart-pain and weariness that fall upon us when we 
dwell too long among the great problems of our being, there 
is no soothing like that of the touch of a loviug hand, or 
the sound of a loving voice that speaks faith as well as 
love. A loving child's hand and voice will melt and com- 
fort the heart ; but the hand and voice of a wise and noble 
friend bring strength as well as comfort. But if the one 
who so should strengthen and comfort us has passed " to 



168 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

where beyond these voices there is peace," then in our 

pain and weariness we yearn towards the unknown land, 

and long for 

" The touch of a vanished hand, 

And the sound of a voice that is still." 

The parenthesis in verse four of lv. calls for some little 
comment. 

" Who trusted God was love indeed, 
And love Creation's final law — 
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw 
With ravine, shrieked against his creed." 

The force of this argument against the existence of 
supreme love must at times have weighed upon every 
heart that dares to let itself feel the reality of the ques- 
tions that surround our lives. When a man, starting from 
the primary recognition of himself and the physical things 
around him, comes to really feel that his origin, his 
destiny, the purpose of his life, and the relation of this 
life to a possible future, are questions of awful import, 
yet of utter mystery to him, then the interpretation of all 
that is and occurs around him, as a means of learning the 
answers to these solemn questions, becomes a matter of 
terrible intensity. No stereotyped answers will then 
satisfy him; no logical demonstrations of an immense 
probability will then give him peace. He says, " I know 



IN MEMORIAM. 169 

that I am, that I have apparently infinite capacities for 
elevation or degradation, for happiness or misery. I want 
to know whether I am borne on by a resistless fate, or 
tossed about by unmeaning chance, or whether I am guided 
by a Power ; and if by a Power, whether that Power seeks 
my good, or is indifferent to it, or is antagonistic to it." 
To most men at ordinary times these questions are alto- 
gether unreal. There are times that come to most men 
when they seem awfully real — questions, too, wanting 
answers, not already answered. The answers must be 
found, primarily, in the heart, in Nature, and in the obser- 
vation of the experiences of other men. The heart gives 
mingled answers of hope and fear ; but in the hearts of the 
noble at their noblest the hope triumphs over the fear. 
From Nature and from the experiences of men the answers, 
too, are of mingled hope and fear. #In human life there is 
much of happiness and elevation, but, as it seems, more of 
sorrow and degradation ; and Nature, with all its beauty 
and peace and joyousness, is yet full of what might bear 
the interpretation of other than love. The mystery of 
pain haunts the universe. In the case of man an explana- 
tion at least suggests itself ; for, as if by an instinct, we 
link together moral progress and pain — the evil points to 
a higher order of good as its proper fruit. But in the case 



170 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

of Nature this interpretation does not avail, and the 
mystery of pain, though less oppressive, is more insoluble. 
Nevertheless there are mitigating considerations. I. A 
ver}*- large proportion of the animal world has but a low 
nervous organization, and, therefore, but small suscepti- 
bility to pain. Vast numbers of the lowest — as the 
Articulata and Eadiata — probably feel no pain at all. We 
must not go into the proof of this here ; but a study of the 
physiology of the nervous system will leave little doubt 
upon the matter on the mind. II. Animals suffer little 
from disease ; their diseases are few and simple, and, if 
serious, quickly fatal. Their chief pain is the short sharp 
agony of death. But by this death the pains of old age 
are forestalled, and life is brought to an end when only its 
best part has been passed through. An animal dying in 
the prime of life has h|d a short life altogether good ; an 
animal living till the decay of old age is completed, has 
had a longer life blurred by a considerable proportion of 
discomfort or pain. III. A large part of the weight of 
even physical suffering in man, lies in the thought of its 
continuance, or the dread of its approach. We may think 
that in animals these mental aggravations of physical pain 
are reduced to their minimum. To them, probably, the 
present pain stands by itself, unintensified hj the past or 



IN MEMOBIAM. 171 

the future. IV. (and this is very important). Our horror 
and misgiving at the sight of all Nature one vast battle- 
field, wherein each tribe is at war with each other, and all 
seek all as their victims and their prey, arises from our 
associating this picture with the evil passions which would 
be required to call out similar acts from men. If a man 
kills a man, we think of hate or basest selfishness as the 
motive of the deed, and so the deed fills us with horror or 
loathing, and we can picture nothing but unlove as present 
in the mind of any who might be concerned in prompting 
or countenancing the deed. But, eliminate the passions 
altogether, and let the deed be accidental, and our loathing 
ceases, and we feel but pity for the victim of the accident. 
Let it further be shown that the victim is the gainer by 
the act, and all feeling in the matter ceases. We erro- 
neously and half unconsciously interpret the physical 
phenomena of nature by a moral key, and so draw out from 
them fears and misgivings that they are in no way calcu- 
lated to suggest. The mystery of pain even in the physical 
universe is not wholly soluble ; but, given the necessity 
of susceptibility to pain as the condition of an organization 
capable of enjoying pleasure, and needing to be warned 
off from those accidents that might endanger its perfect- 
ness or its very existence, and there remains not much in 



172 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

the contemplation of physical nature to disturb the heart. 
This necessity of pain is not manifestly certain, but it 
seems highly probable; and this probability co-acting with 
the other mitigating considerations, before set forth, may 
serve to keep the mind in suspension until peradventure 
answers of fuller hopefulness may be heard. 

The saddest thought in connexion with the sufferings of 
animals is this, that, as soon as they come into contact 
with man, pain, unnatural and useless to themselves, falls 
upon them. I do not mean the pain of kindly discipline 
to work — this may have its compensations, and, at all 
events, soon comes to be easily and cheerfully borne ; but 
I mean the pain that arises out of the coarseness and 
selfishness and cruelty of men. The horse of a brutal man 
is, if we will think of it, an object of sorrowful and per- 
plexing contemplation. But here we are out of the sphere 
of nature ; and the sorrow and perplexity form but part 
of that great mystery according to which all beings known 
to xis are liable to suffering (and more than suffering) from 
the unworthiness of others. The man who sins not only 
sows the seeds of pain and degradation for himself in the 
future, but he scatters possible pain and degradation 
among all those who in the remotest degree or the most 
indirect manner come within his influence. Standing 



IN MEMORIAM. 173 

upon the borders of the circle of humanity, are the animals 
whom man has domesticated to his use ; they, in measure, 
catch his powers, share his pleasures, sympathize with his 
aims, and, alas, receive also the bitter fruit of his sins. 
The wild horse struck down and devoured by the beast of 
prey presents a startling picture, from which nearly all the 
horror vanishes as we contemplate it; the horse ill-fed 
and tortured by a brutal man presents a picture whose 
sadness and mysteriousness deepen the more as we dwell 
upon it the more. That the law of suffering, vicarious, 
yet neither substitutional nor expiatory, should reach down 
to him also, completes this greatest mystery. 

To resume. In lv. the thought of In Memoriam reaches 
its climax. Starting from the personal grief, it has soared 
right away into the questions affecting universal humanity, 
but, finding no answer, can but rest upon 

" Behind the veil, behind the veil." (lv.) 

Then in lvi. it is as if the heart had grown weary with 
the strain, and fell back like a tired bird into the nest of 
its personal sorrow. There even comes a revulsion of 
feeling, as if the questionings had been altogether useless 
or out of place. 



174 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

" Peace, come away ; the song of woe 
Is after all an earthly song ; 
Peace, come away ; we do him wrong 
To sing so wildly, let us go." (lvi.) 

For three cantos (lvi., lvii., and Lvin.) there is a 
suspension of all thought, and just a simple dwelling upon 
feeling. Henceforth until a new flight into happier and 
more hopeful thought takes place, the poem keeps very- 
near to the personal, and only 

" Loosens from the lip 
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip 
Their wings in tears and skim away." 

From lix. to lxiv. is another group, clustering around 
the question of how the departed spirit regards its old 
life and associations. The contrast of the old with the 
new is figured by a village maid whose heart is set upon 
one born above her. Her own surroundings look poor 
to her, yet she cannot picture his ways or his whereabouts, 
neither does she think that he can love her. So the 
mourner to his friend who has moved into a sphere above 
him. " To thee also, spirit, these surroundings of mine 
and myself also must look low and poor. Yet will not love 
knit us, for not Shakespere can love thee more ? But if to 
remember me and my love 



IN MEMORIAM. 175 

' Could make thee somewhat blench or fail, 
Then be my love an idle tale 
And fading legend of the past.' (lxi.) 

Yet for me to love my hound 

' Can hang no weight upon my heart, 
In its assumptions up to heaven ;' (Lxn.) 

so seeing I am, perchance, as much more than he as thou 
art than I, to love me still may be no clog upon thy 
upward progress." So runs the plea ; dwelling ever upon 
the value of love, and how it may not be wasted nor its 
ties broken, and settling at last upon the brighter 

thought, 

" Since we deserved the name of friends, 
And thine effect so lives in me, 
A part of mine may live in thee, 
And move thee on to noble ends." (lxtv.) 

lxiii. is gracefully tender, and seems as worthy to be 
true for one who has risen to heaven as for him who has 
risen to the high places of the earth. 

lxv. sets forth a truth that is not often recognized or 
precisely understood. A great grief acts upon different 
natures in very different manners. Some it renders bitter, 
but then I think there must be more than grief at work — 
there must be unworthiness also, either in the sufferer, or 
in some who have had to do with bringing his grief upon 



176 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

hini. A sorrow, pure and simple, does not, I think, make 
a worthy nature bitter. Some, grief altogether subdues ; 
their whole nature is saddened, every thought and feeling, 
every utterance and manner is attuned to the dominant 
sorrow. These may be true and worthy men and women, 
but I think they are generally weak, unless indeed the 
grief be such as not only to wring the heart, but to over- 
turn the balance of the mind. Then although they may 
have been originally strong, sorrow has brought them to 
weakness. Some there are whom grief altogether embitters 
or subdues, who yet show a smiling face, wearing a mask 
to conceal the furrows of pain. This type is very com- 
monly recognized, and is even supposed to be more widely 
spread than it actually is. Where it exists, the smile is 
the result of insincerity which seeks a disguise, or of pride 
which shrinks from the imagined humiliation of pity, or of 
sensitiveness which fears the pain that unchastened hands 
may give in touching the never-healing wounds. But there 
are some (and of these the poem speaks) into the depths 
of whose hearts a great grief sinks, lying there cold 
and still like the waters of the ice-stream in the bed of the 
Mexican Gulf while the waters warm with the rays of a 
tropical sun float and move above. In these natures the 
grief never changes, is never forgotten. Through all 



IN MEMORIAM. 177 

variations of surface thought and feeling, it lies there cold 
and still, felt for ever. Yet the warmth at the surface is 
genuine, not feigned. The laugh is the laugh of genuine 
merriment, the smile expresses genuine kindness, and 
active sympathy. The apparent interest in matters of 
thought is real interest. No mask is worn. The surface 
of the mind seems what it is. None the less, the depths of 
the mind are what they are ; for there are two layers of 
thought and feeling. The one changes with and adapts 
itself to the perpetually varying circumstances and 
characters of the outer life, the other changes not at all. 
This is a kind of nature not often understood. To most 
men it seems that a langh either must be hollow, or 
must express the absence of pain. But, in truth, the outer 
eyes may be looking upon the play of children, and the 
outer ears listening to their laughter, while the outer 
heart, so to say, responds to their beauty and their joy ; 
yet none the less the inner heart shall be thrilling to the 
tones of a dear voice that lingers on the ear for ever, while 
to lie down and sleep, as the lost beloved is sleeping, would 
seem the sweetest thing on earth. A sad heart behind a 
gay smile, this is common enough, and commonly enough 
understood ; a sad heart behind a gay heart, this is more 
rare, and still more rarely understood. 

N 



178 A STUDY OF TENNTSON. 

The cantos from lxvi. to lxx. hover about the land of 
sleep and dreams. Upon lxvi. I have dwelt a little in 
" A few days with the Poet Laureate." The rest need no 
special comment ; their delicate beauty is not hard to get 
at, though in each there is a special touch that has to grow 
upon the mind. It now and then happens to a man to live 
a separate and more beautiful life (" a night-long Present ") 
in his dreams, night after night, over a long space of time. 
This is the especial privilege of sorrow, and of sensitive, 
delicate health, though even to them it does not often fall. 
It is usual to speak of all such experiences as morbid, and 
so to dispose of them. But I think that this does not 
quite dispose of them. Morbid they certainly are, if 
morbid means dependent upon abnormal and imperfect 
conditions of health. As physiological or pathological 
symptoms they are bad, for they imply some derangement 
of the organization. But it appears to me far from certain 
that the most perfect condition of the organization is 
always the most favourable for the exercise of the highest 
powers of the soul. Exalted conditions of intellect and 
imagination are very frequent incidents of disease. When 
the body is trembling on the borders of illness, then the 
mind is oftentimes most active and most sensitive. Genius 
and madness are proverbially akin, and it is often difficult 



IN MEMOBIAM. 179 

to determine from the appearance of a head or brain 
whether it indicates incipient idiotcy or an exceptional 
elevation of power. Not unfrequently, elements of im- 
becility and of genius coexist in the same mind. Brilliant 
conceptions and flashes of spontaneous thought sometimes 
call back the mind on the threshold of sleep, and unless 
things hard to disbelieve be altogether false, that moment 
when disease has almost reached its consummation in death 
is, now and then, the moment when powers of preter- 
natural intensity flash out from the soul. Therefore I 
think that in the mouths of those who are wise " a morbid 
condition of mind " should rather be used to mean a condi- 
tion of mind indicating a morbid condition of body than 
to pronounce any judgment upon the condition of the mind 
itself. By what name this condition should be described 
must be determined upon other and higher considerations. 
I think it is not without significance that these dream - 
poems are placed thus late in the history of the poet's 
sorrow. The experience of different minds varies in this 
matter ; but I think that it will, for the most part, be 
found that it is the things that touch the surface of the 
mind that are reproduced in dreams ; the great facts and 
emotions of life do not so reappear, and a deep and sad 
emotion that possesses every fibre of the soul during the 



180 A STUDY OF TENNTSON. 

hours of waking will be altogether ignored in the life of 
dreams. Only later, when the mind has become familiar 
with its sorrow, when the grief has come to mingle with 
rather than overmaster every other thought, when it has 
become a member of the household, so to say, rather than 
a strange and awe-inspiring visitor, then like other things 
of the tisual life, it may visit the world of dreams. It 
mingles with the surface of the mind as well as lies deep 
down at the bottom, and by this right it joins that medley 
of superficialities which forms our common dreams. But 
even so it will every now and then separate itself and 
assert its distinctness and superiority, and so there come 
those tenderer or nobler reminiscences that are among th 
chief joys of the heart-wearied mourner. 

" Till all at once, beyoDd the -will, 
I hear a wizard music roll, 
And through a lattice on the soul, 
Looks thy fair face and makes it still." (lxix.) 

But not to all true mourners do these dreams ever come. 

It may be noticed that this ebb-time of emotion, in which 
dreams come, is also the time in which, in the poet's mind, 
grief is apt to blossom into poetry. But of this I have 
spoken more at length elsewhere. 

lxxi. marks the second anniversary of death. 



m MEMORIAM. 181 

From lxxii. to lxxvt. deal with [fame. The dead man 
never lived to achieve fame though the make of greatness 
was in him : 

" So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, 
I see thee what thou art, and know 
Thy likeness to the wise below, 
Thy kindred with the great of old." (lxxiii.) 

The tone of this group of poems is not altogether comfort- 
able. There is a little anger in them against the evanescent 
nature of fame and the way in which the world forgets, or 
is supposed to forget its greatest and noblest. But I think 
the thought of fame at all comes out of the smallness, not 
the greatness of our nature. There are ambitions worthy 
of the highest. The ambition to be — to be strong and wise 
and good ; to be of the strongest and wisest and best — this 
is one of these : 

" hollow wraith of dying fame, 

Fade wholly while the soul exults, 
And self-infolds the large results 
Of force that would have forged a name." (lxxii.) 

The ambition to do — to do deeds that shall affect humanity, 
everywhere and through all time, is another worthy ambi- 
tion. So also is the ambition to utter well thoughts that 
shall ring through the world. And what may the highest 



182 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

man ask of his fellows ? Only love, I think, or that im- 
personal love which we call sympathy. This will be 
precious to him ; but, failing this, the highest man will 
ask nothing. Unloving praise he will turn from, and love 
being given, there is no need of praise. I can think of 
Jesus Christ as rejoicing in what He ivas ; I can think of 
ITim as exulting in what he did, and the influence of His 
doings upon the destiny of our race ; I can think of Him as 
moved by His own noble utterances of moral beauty and 
spiritual truth ; I can think of Him as yearning for the 
love of men, and for their s}^mpathy with Him in His work ; 
but I cannot think of Him as moved by the desire of fame, 
or as having any pleasure, for the mere fact's sake, though 
His name should ring through the world. "See thou tell 
no man !" was His most frequent utterance. 

I know that the iove of fame is a very natural and an 
almost universal feeling. But it is natural to our small- 
ness, not to our greatness. I know also that it is perhaps 
the strongest stimulus to work that acts upon men of power. 
But though many great things have been done through its 
influence, no highest thing has been so produced. For in 
all highest achievements self is forgotten, whereas to the 
thought of fame self is ever present. However, our group 
comes back to a healthy tone at the end, for it closes, 



IN MEMORIAM. 183 

" But what of that ? My darkened ways 
Shall ring with music all the same ; 
To breathe my loss is more thau fame, 
To utter love more sweet than praise." (lxxvi.) 

We now come to another great halting-place in the poem. 
I said that canto xxvn. seems to me the first important 
halting-place — the point at which the monrner rises out of 
the exclusive contemplation of his personal grief into the 
consideration of those great problems that concern the 
whole race rather than the individual. I further showed 
that in lv. these questionings reach their climax, and that 
from that point the poem keeps constantly near to the 
mourner's personal sorrow and the memory of the dead. 
The thoughts rise into the universal still, hut only in the 
shortest flights, a fresh departure from memory being 
taken in nearly every canto. Thus we have at present 
three divisions to the poem ; first, from i. to xxvn., second, 
from xxvn. to lv., third, from lv. to lxxvi., the point we 
have reached. Through all these, however, whatever their 
differences, grief is the dominant note. By this common 
character they become one. 

At lxxvii. a change commences, xxvin., from which the 
first change starts, is a Christmas poem ; so also is this. 
The change is towards recovery. Through the undertone 



1S4 A STUDY OF TUNNTSOiV. 

of grief, there begins to flash up, bow and then, the note of 
hope, and gradually the hope grows stronger and more 
permanent, till at last the poem ends in hope so intense as 
to be almost joy. The grief was love under another form ; 
no less the hope is love. The recovery consists in the 
passing of grief into hope, not in the passing of love into 
forgetful ness. Love looking back upon loss must be grief; 
love looking forward to fruition must be hope. There is 
no loss of love, but rather its conversion into a higher form. 

By this change, the mourner's feelings towards the 
present are also changed. While love looks back in tears, 
the present seems but as a blighted tree, from, which the 
fruit has fallen, withered ; when love looks forward in 
hope, the present becomes to its eyes the seed of nobler 
fruit in the future, and by this change of regard for the 
present the recovery of health is made manifest. 

As far as we have gone, In Memoriam is best studied by 
following the poems in the order in which they stand ; the 
connexion of thought and the connexion of place manifestly 
coincide. But from this point, it seems to be otherwise. 
Henceforth the main drift of the poem is to set forth the 
progress of recovery, but woven into this main drift are 
lines of thought which are not dealt with and put away at 
once as in the first part of the poem, but which rise to the 



m MEMORIAM. . 185 

surface again and again in an intricate and apparently 
irregular manner. The classification of this remaining 
portion becomes therefore somewhat difficult. I think it 
will best be accomplished by pursuing one after another 
the incidental lines of thought until these are exhausted, 
and the residuum will then be the direct exhibition of the 
progress of recovery. To trace first, then, the incidental 
lines of thought : — 

The Christmas poem lxxvji. by its close is linked to 
lxxxix. and cxxn. In the truest-hearted, the sense of loss 
never dies, the place of the lost is never filled. If to any 
it seem otherwise 

" He tasted love with half his mind 
Nor ever drank the inviolate spring 
Where nighest heaven." (lxxxix.) ? - (X£ .) 

It is not quite true what another poet has said, that 

" The saddest grave that ever tears kept green 
Sinks to the common level of the field ; 
Then o'er it runs a road." 

Now and then, to the last, some mourner can say, 

" Ah, dear, but come thou back to me : 

Whatever change the years have wrought, ' 
I find not yet one lonely thought 
That cries against my wish for thee.'' (lxxxix.) 1- [XC 



1S6 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

I think it would be the confession of the essential 

of our race if it had to he owned that such fidelity as this 

is never found. , . v 

By a natural transition we pass to xcvir The mourner 
on earth is faithful, and he clings to the belief that the 
spirit in heaven is not less faithful, though his state is so 
raised, and his sphere of thought and interest so much 
greater and nobler. He is occupied, not estranged ; it was 
his heart not his mind that was pledged. The form of the 
poem is beautiful, and recalls at a higher level the thought 

of LIX. 

By another natural transition, we pass to a group con- 
sisting of lxxxi., xc, xci., xcn., xcin., and cxxi. If both 
spirits are faithful, it is natural that they should long for 
communion, and that he should long most who needs it 

most. 

" For this alone on Death I wreak 

The wrath that garners in my heart ; 

He put our lives so far apart 

We cannot hear each other speak." (lxxxi.1) ilX^Y "y 

I have spoken elsewhere of the kind of questioning and 
half-hope expressed in cantos xc. to xcin. I think at least 
it may be said that he is a happier mourner who is not 
sure that such things may not happen. The question is 
full of difficulty. If the dead sleep, then, before evidence, 



IN ME2I0RIAM. 187 

they do not appear. But perhaps they do not sleep. The 
absurdity of the notion of the corporeal appearance of a 
spirit is not a difficulty. In any case we may say that the 
appearance is a phantasm. As, when you think of a friend, 
his bodily presence is more or less vividly before your 
consciousness, so, if the departed spirit could by any 
means impress your spirit, the memory of his bodily 
presence might, in association with the spirit impression, 
be so vividly recalled to your mind as to make him seem 
corporeally before you. I have no opinion upon the 
matter ; but I perceive that it is not fair to tax those who 
believe or hope in the possibility with the absurdity 
of asserting that a spirit^ may stand visible to the eyes 
of all. 

There is a passage in lxxsiv. that must detain us for a 
moment. In supposed commtmion with the dead, the poet 
asks, 

" ' Can clouds of nature stain 

The starry clearness of the free ? 

How is it ? Canst thou feel for me 
Some painless sympathy with pain?' 

" And lightly does the whisper fall ; 
' 'Tis hard for thee to fathom this ; 
I triumph in conclusive bliss, 
And that serene result of all.' " 



188 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

The question is as old as loss and grief, and is even 

wider than the poem puts it, and may rise higher. Of 

God, also, as of the dead, we ask, how does He regard our 

pain ? His answer may be supposed to be the same as 

theirs. 

" I triumph in conclusive bliss, 
And that serene result of all." 

Herein lies one of the most blessed hopes of our race. 
That He who is the God of Love is also the God of Happi- 
ness; that the God over all is Blessed for Ever, has in it a 
hope deeper and stronger than all the fears that infest our 
lives. A less loving than He must fail of happiness, with- 
out the knowledge that, at bottom, all is well. If we may 
so use human forms of speech, the Love of God assures us 
of his good heart towards us ; the Happiness of God is the 
proof that all His purposes of Love are in the way of com- 
plete fulfilment. 

God is happy, and so all is well. But yet, for the 
present, we suffer, and the question returns — 

" Canst thou feel for me 
Some painless sympathy with pain ?" 

The answer to this is hidden yet revealed in the story of 
the Man of Sorrows who is the express image of the 



IN MEM DEI AM. 189 

Father's Person. " Surely He hath borne our griefs and 
carried our sorrows." 

"And my heart grew more despairing, and my soul was dark and 
dreary, 
Till I saw the Godhead bendiDg, faint and meek and very 

weary ; 
Not in blessedness supernal, sitting easy on a throne, 
Dealing sorrow unto others, withjio sorrow of His own." 

In the Divine sorrow is found the consolation under 
present pain ; in the Divine happiness the great guarantee 
of hope for the future. 

lxxix., lxxx., lxxxiii., and cxn. are four pictures of what 
might have been had the dead man lived. The first, sup- 
poses the friend who now lives to have been the one to 
die ; the second pictures what their love might have 
grown to had both lived; the third is a sweet- life-picture 
of domestic joy ending in a fairer death ;* while the 
fourth paints a career of public service and honour in a 
time of civil strife. There is a completeness about this 
group that can scarcely be accidental. 

The last verse of lxxx. calls for some special comment. 

* Most readers of In Memoriam will know that Arthur Hallam was 
engaged to one of Tennyson's sisters. 



190 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

Death broke a short friendship, and though the love of the 
friends was great, yet 

" This haunting whisper makes me faint, 
' More years had made me love thee more.' 
But Death returns an answer sweet : 

'My sudden frost was sudden gain, 

And gave all ripeness to the grain, 
It might have drawn from after-heat.' " (lsxx.) £vxW 

There is a profound truth in Death's answer, though there 
are conditions to the truth. The immature grain, frost 
would kill ; but the grain mature though not ripe will be 
ripened by its action. So a friendship that was but just 
formed, wherein the friends though they had been drawn 
together, had not had time to arrive at a knowledge of 
each other's characters, this friendship, broken by death, 
though it would leave a tender memory behind it, could 
not well be ripened by the sudden frost. But when love 
has come to be firmly based upon character, then death 
can do at once all that time could ever have accomplished. 
If you have lost one whom you had learned to know well 
and who was dear to you, be sure that your present love is 
the measure of your highest capacity of love for that lost 
one. And indeed more than this is true ; for death 
beatifies the lost one, by leaving upon your memory the 



IN MEMORIAM. 191 

ideal image of your friend, freed from the petty blurs that 
soil all human characters ; and death beatifies your love, 
by raising it above all the smallnesses of selfishness and 
varying moods, and enshrining it for ever amongst your 
holiest emotions. An idealized friend, and an idealized 
love — these are the blessings that death brings to the true 
heart, in payment for the joy that he takes away, and in 
compensation for the pain that he lays upon the heart. I 
think that to him who is content to live wholly for the 
higher and the hereafter, it may not seem amiss, when the 
first pain has throbbed itself to calm, to kneel down, 
though still with streaming eyes, and thank God that his 
loved one and his love have risen to the bosom of the 
Unblemished and the Changeless. 

I do not presume to speak of the mystery of the death 
of the Holy One, but looking at it from this point of view 
alone, I conceive that, had it been written of Him — 



"And, lo ! a shape with pallid smile divine, 
Wandered in Palestine ; 
And Adam's might was stately in His eyes, 

And Eve's wan sweetness glimmered on His cheek, 
And when He opened heavenly lips to speak, 
' I heard, disturbing Pilate into sighs, 
The rustle of those leaves in Paradise." 



192 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

Had tints much and no more "been the story of His human 
life, then the power of that life to move and to win the 
hearts of men would have "been immeasurably less. Not 
that there was wanting any sweetness or completeness in 
the life itself, but, uncrowned by death, it would have 
lacked that regal sway over the hearts of men which He 
wields as King of Sorrow no less than as Lord of Love. 
Death alone immortalizes. " I if I be lifted up from the 
earth, will draw all men unto Me." In the victory of the 
Cross is emblazoned the Omnipotence of Love and Death. 

To return. The last poem of the group with which we 
have just been dealing, seems to me to belong also to 
another group consisting of a number of part-portraitures 
of the dead man. These are xcv., cvin., cix., ex., cxi., and 
cxit. The first of these takes up a point dropped in the 
previous poem, where, in the letters read at night — 

" Strangely spoke 

The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell 
On doubts that drive the coward back, 
And keen through wordy snares to track 

Suggestion to her inmost cell." (xciv.) 

Then xcv. describes how the dead friend dealt with 
doubt, and the result upon his character. Men, for the 
most part, either beat off doubts, or entertain them. Not 



IN MEMORIAM. 193 

many have, on the one hand, the courage, and, on the 
other hand, the loyalty to truth, to really grapple with 
them, and see what of force they contain. He who holds 
on to a faith by dint of shutting his ears to all that can be 
said against it, does not take very high ground; but he 
who lets go a faith by simply opening his ears to all that 
can be said against it, does not, of a certainty, take higher 
ground. The first manner is of the nature of superstition ; 
the second is of the ve,icy spirit of irreverence, which 
is irreligion. 

" There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds." (xcv.) 

That is deeply true ; but for the doubt to be honest, it 
must be true of the doubter that 

" He fought his doubts and gathered strength, 
He would not make his judgment blind, 
He faced the spectres of the mind, 
And laid them :" (xcv.) 

And then the reward will come ; 

" Thus he came at length 
To find a stronger faith his own : 
And Power was with him in the night, 
Which makes the darkness and the light, 
And dwells not in the light alone." (xcv.) 

o 



194 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

Doubt is so much the fashion, and, in truth, so much the 
necessity of our time, that there is danger that it come to 
be looked upon as in itself a good. It is good to doubt 
the false, if the doubt be pursued to the overthrow of the 
false; it is good to doubt the true that has come to us 
by tradition or education alone, if the doubt be pursued 
to the establishment of the true; otherwise there is no 
good in doubt at all. That feeble life that truth, tradition- 
ally held, can give to the nature is better than the blood- 
lessness of mere doubt. Strong minds doubt, but doubt 
is no proof of strength ; noble minds doubt — in these days, 
all the noblest must pass through doubt — but doubt is no 
proof of nobility. The strength and the nobility are 
shown when the doubts are grappled with till they yield 
up some hidden treasure of truth. Then the truth is but 
the second and crowning reward ; the first reward began 
when the struggle began, being found in the growth of 
that intellectual and moral strength which was at once the 
parent and the offspring of the contest. 

We may pass lightly over the other poems of this group. 
cviii. pictures nobly a noble man ; cix. describes his 
influence upon others ; ex. portrays the outward graces of 
the man — the gentleman in contrast with the " churl in 
spirit ;" cxi. returns to the quality of his mind, to excuse 



IN MEMORIAM. 195 

his friend that he measures living men by so high a stand- 
ard ; while cxn. shows the fruit that his character would 
have borne in public life. The last part of cxn. recalls 
the poem " Love thou thy land," and it joins with the 
whole of this group (except xcv.) in leading up to the 
thought of cxi ii. 

This poem is the fullest expression of the thought that 
so often recurs throughout the writings of our poet. In 
" Love thou thy land" we have — ■ 

" Make Knowledge circle with the winds ; 
But let her herald, Eeverence, fly 
Before her to whatever sky 
Bear seed of men and growth of minds." 

In the dedication to "In Memoriam " we have — 

" Let Knowledge grow from more to more ; 
But more of Eeverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and soul, according well, 
May make one music as before, 
But vaster." 

And now we come to the poem immediately before us. 

If these three be carefully studied, it will be perceived 
that they contemplate knowledge under two different 
aspects — one as a means by which man apprehends the 



196 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

universe around him; the other as an instrument for 
accomplishing those practical results which he desires to 
hring about. Under one aspect, knowledge would he 
praised as tending to the elevation of the nature ; under 
the other as being a form of power. In the one case it is 
thought to subserve being, in the other, doing. 

Is knowledge elevating ? Yes, if it be harmonized by 
reverence, not otherwise. So says the poet. 

" Let her know her place ; 
She is the second, not the first." (cxiii.) 

" Knowledge puffeth up" is an ancient saying of autho- 
rity. To all minds the unknown is touched with awe. 
Awe enlightened by knowledge approaches reverence ; 
thei'e is wanting but love to complete it. If the splendours 
and wonders of the universe do not penetrate to the heart 
as well as the head, then not only no reverence is awakened, 
but awe is dispelled. That which by fuller knowledge 
should have come to seem more holy, because more radiant 
with the presence of God, comes to lose all semblance of 
holiness, love being wanting, because God is not perceived 
by the head, but felt, only, by the heart. Though the 
head should in some sort reach Him, it would be but as a 
First Cause, and this apprehension of Him is not reverence, 



IN MEMORIAM. 197 

nor akin to it. If it should seem that by growth in know- 
ledge, even though reverence is not attained, still little is 
actually lost, and the gain is positive, and so knowledge 
must anyhow he good; the answer is twofold. First, if 
that which should have brought reverence as its result has 
come to pass, and reverence has not resulted, the nature is 
thereby hardened, and rendered more essentially irreverent. 
This principle is receiving perpetual illustration in the 
moral history of men. Every time a virtue is missed, 
through the non-appropriation of the offered means to that 
virtue, the corresponding defect in the character is strength- 
ened. He who suffers sorrow or joy, the stirrings of a great 
example, or the pain of sudden shame to pass over his soul 
without leaving some result of moral elevation behind it, 
more than misses a possible growth in grace. The child 
corrected, and unamended, is hardened by the correction. 
He who eats and drinks the outward elements of a sacra- 
ment, receiving with them no inward and spiritual grace, 
eats and drinks condemnation to himself. And so a man 
who grows into a fuller knowledge of the outward and 
visible signs of God, without getting nearer, by the grace 
of reverence, to the Indwelling Spirit, has set the seal upon 
the irreverence of his soul. 

Second (and this though akin to the first is distinct 



198 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

from it), by gaining knowledge, and no reverence with it, 
a man has used up a portion of the reserve of means to 
reverence which was before available for his service. Of 
the ignorant man who is irreverent, it may always be 
hoped that did he but know more he would revere more. 
If he has come to know more, and still does not revere, this 
hope, because this means, is gone. 

It need scarcely be said that all this assumes the funda- 
mental nature of reverence in relation to elevation of 
character. The only hope ihat the lower can grow higher 
is found in the fact that the lower can revere the higher. 
The power of reverence is the measure of the life of the 
soul. That which is beyond my apprehension is beyond 
my ambition, and that which excites in me no thrill of 
admiration has no counterpart in my character. So that 
reverence is fundamental to goodness, and whatever 
quenches the growth of that puts an end to the possibility 
of this. 

Thus much for the one aspect of knowledge. On the 
other hand, Is knowledge power ? Yes, but the power 
may be beneficent or malignant. So says the poet. 

"What is she, cut from love and faith, 
But some wild Pallas from the brain 
Of demons. 



IN MEMOMAM. 199 

" A higher hand must make her mild, 
If all be not in vain ; and guide 
Her footsteps, moving side by side 
"With wisdom, like the younger child : 

" For she is earthly of the mind, 

But Wisdom heavenly of the soul. 
O, friend, who earnest to thy goal 
So early, leaving me behind, 

" I would the great world grew like thee, 
Who grewest not alone in power 
And knowledge, but, by year and hour, 
In reverence and in charity." (cxm.) 

I apprehend that there is no truth of deeper importance, at 
the present moment, to our country than this. In past 
ages of our history, the great masses of the people, occupied 
in incessant and unintellectual toil, their minds inactive, 
and their passions kept in check by a traditional respect 
for superiors, and an unquestioning if unreflecting and 
low-toned religiousness, formed, for practical purposes, an 
unimportant element in the nation. Even the great 
popular movements of the past were, after all, the work of 
the minority. Now all this is changed, or is rapidly 
changing. The traditional respect for sxiperiors is virtually 
dead; the working-classes are everywhere seeking and 



200 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

gaining knowledge, and thought, of some sort or other, is 
active amongst them. At the same time, the church has 
almost entirely lost its hold upon these men. Here, then, 
the condition of things is changed to its very foundations. 
What is to come of the change ? The passions will assert 
themselves, as a matter of course. The passions always do 
assert themselves in all men. Self-interest, impatience of 
opposition, love of power, are universal instincts. How 
are these passions to be governed in this new nation rising 
up amongst us ? By the intellect, do we hope ? The 
intellect is very often the servant of the passions ; it is 
very rarely their ruler. No man is just or tolerant or 
generous by the persuasion of the intellect, though often 
enough the intellect points a surer road and supplies more 
efficient instruments for the ends of injustice, intolerance, 
and selfishness. The intellect makes no election of good 
or evil ; it is the servant to whomsoever is master in the 
nature, be that master good or bad. And yet we go on 
talking of education as the panacea for all the ills of the 
nation and the great lever which is to raise the people, and 
by it, for the most part, mean no more than a certain 
amount of knowledge-giving, or a little more sharpening of 
the intellectual faculties. Every school-inspector, every 
middle-class examiner lays his rule and measure to this. 



' IN MEMOEIAM. 201 

Every gentleman of leisure who feels that he has a mission 
to improve the minds of the working-classes, thinks he has 
done well when he has supplied to them another fact or 
two, or fed them with another meal of logic finely-minced 
for weak digestions. I think we have had enough and 
more than enough of this, if nothing else than this is to be 
done. 

" Who loves not Knowledge ? Who shall rail 
Against her beauty ? May she mix 
With men and prosper ? Who shall fix 
Her pillars ? Let her work prevail." (cxiii.) 

But " she is the second, not the first." The head is the 
propelling but not the guiding part of the nature. He who 
multiplies engine-power, and heaps on fuel without limit, 
taking no care of his steerage, is not a wise ship-master. I, 
for one, look upon the present age as rich in the elements 
of a glorious future ; but every one of these elements may 
also subserve an overwhelming catastrophe. The great 
need of our age is steerage power. The traditional respect 
for superiors was a superstition ; it is right that it should 
have passed away. But in its place we must have a true 
respect for real superiors, or the nation must come to ship- 
wreck. The fading faith in religion was, in large measure, 
a superstitious belief in a corrupt Christianity ; it is right 



202 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

that it should have passed away. But in its place we must 
have a real belief in a pure Christianity, or every man of 
the nation must come to shipwreck. Faith in men, love to 
men, respect for men ; faith in God, love to God, reverence 
for God — who will supply these to the world ? Let these 
abound, and then 

" Make Knowledge circle with the winds." 

But let these be wanting, then I have no faith in the power 
of knowledge to raise the world, but rather fear her as 
" some wild Pallas from the brain of demons." Better 
head and heart both sleep for ever, than that the head 
should awaken while the heart still sleeps, or but awakes 
to give entrance to a devil. 

Having thus examined some of the incidental lines of 
thought that arise out of the record of the progress of the 
mourner's recovery, we now briefly address ourselves to 
the observation of the main current of the change. 

The Christmas games in lxxvii. are touched and half- 
saddened by " the quiet sense of something lost," but they 
are not hollow mockeries of mirth as they were in xxx. 
Then sorrow quenched mirth ; now it lives side by side 
with it. The sadness of the past, and the household smiles 



IN ME MORI AM. 203 

of the present no longer seem discordant. So also Canto 
lxxviii. takes up the last line of ix., and seeks to heal the 
wound that it may have given. Grief for the lost often 
seems half cruel to the living. They and their love seem 
for the time forgotten in the sorrow for the love that is 
gone. But by-and-by the lost love and the living love can 
live side by side in the heart, as sorrow and mirth can do. 
The past and the present are harmonized. This . is the 
beginning of health. The restoring power of the thought 
of lxxix. must needs be very great, as also must the steady- 
ing power of the thought of lxxx. lxxxi. is almost, and 
lxxxiii. is quite a relapse ; but between them in lxxxii. is 
the deliberate longing for the currents of life to return 
into living channels, lxxxiii. yearns again towards the 
might-have-been, and that is the old disease ; but lxxxiv. 
and lxxxv., with also cvn. picture the still-may-be, and this 
is health. But all through this texture of the present and 
the future, is woven the golden thread of the past and 
its memories, shining out through those portraits of the dead 
man which we have studied, and through those beautiful 
snatches of reminiscence in lxxxvl, lxxxvjii., xcix., c, ci., 
and xciv. 

The permanence, and yet, as soon as time had been given 
to the nature to recover itself, the healthiness of this love 



204 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

and grief are to a great extent explained in the fourteenth 
verse of lxxxiv. 

" Likewise the imaginative woe, 

That loved to handle spiritual strife, 
Diffused the shock through all my life, 
But in the present broke the blow." 

Sometimes a grief of this kind falls only upon the 
emotions, and then, according to the character of the 
person, it is evanescent or becomes morbid. But if it is 
taken up by the whole nature — intellect, imagination, 
conscience as well as emotions — then, growing among all 
the fibres of the soul, it becomes a permanent part of the 
mental organization, and an element in all the processes 
of the intellect, the pictures of the imagination, and the 
purposes and motives of the moral nature. But while 
thus making for itself an abiding-place in the mind and 
heart, it excites so many activities, in every part of the 
nature, that its immediate force is broken by their counter- 
action. It becomes a permanent influence instead of a 
temporary but overwhelming force. 

In xciv. I think the poetry of In Memoriam rises to its 
climax. I say the poetry, for it is that that I mean. 
Other parts excel it in elevation of thought, but none in 
intensity of poetic beauty. The picture of day-break 



IN MEMORIAM. 205 

which closes it is unsurpassable. I should have said, it is 
quite unmatched, but that I remember the " Essay without 
End " that appeared in one of the earliest numbers of the 
"Cornhill Magazine," and which is said to have been from 
the pen of Thackeray. In that, too, day-dawn is marvel- 
lously pictured, and these two form an exquisite and perfect 
pair. 

But xciv. is specially important for another reason. In 
it we have reached, for the first time, a footing of firm 
health of mind. The mourner is in real and full communion 
with his living friends, yet is so far from having forgotten 
the dead friend that then, above all other times — 

' : A hunger seized nay heart ; I read 

Of that glad year which once had been, 
In those fall'n leaves which kept their green, 
The noble letters of the dead. 



' So word by word, and line by line, 

The dead man touched me from the past, 
And all at once it seemed, at last 
His living soul was flashed on mine, 

' And mine in his was wound." (xciv.) 



It is when love has outlived the disease of grief, when 
health has returned, and yet love lasts "pure and whole," 
that the full glory of communion with the dead is known, 



206 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

for communion with the dead is then, on a lower level, 
like communion with God. 

In contrast with the rapture of xciv., xcvi. feels very- 
strange, though taken by itself it is a beautiful simile, 
beautifully set forth — a simile strange to have been 
thought of, yet fitting strangely well. 

xcvu. is natural, and the exact opposite would have been 
no less natural. Almost capriciously the heart fixes upon 
some places that are linked to the memory of the dead, 
and covers them with "a treble darkness," while over 
others a holy light broods for ever. 

From xcviii. to cvi. form a group dealing with time and 
circumstance, bringing together another anniversary of the 
death-day of the departed (xcviii.), a change of home 
(xcix.— en.), a Christmas (ciii.-civ.), a New Year (cv.), and a 
birthday of the dead man ; the whole group suggesting 
the commencement of a new chapter of life, and leading up 
to the resolve of cvn. cv. rings the dawn of the new day 
in noble tones, ci. is an exquisite picture of the rivalry 
of two regrets, and the dream of en. is very beautiful. I 
do not think that this latter is meant to be significant in 
all its details. If it were a real dream it is unlikely that 
it would be so, and if but an art dream, I think it would 
be bad art, because antagonistic to verisimilitude, to con- 



IN MEMORIAM. 207 

struct it significant throughout. Its leading thought is 
what entitles it to a place in the poem. Of details : — the 
" hall " probably represents the Lincolnshire parsonage 
that the mourner was just leaving ; the " river " is the 
stream to which he wrote "A farewell ;" the maidens are 
probably his sisters, to whom in the confusion common to 
dreams he ascribes his own poems upon his dead friend ; 
the journey is suggested by his approaching start upon the 
wild ocean of life. The fact that upon going out to sea 
he found, in his dream, his living friend instead of only 
the " veiled statue " of him, would naturally leave his 
after-morn content." 

Passing over the portraitures that we have already 
dwelt upon, and the poem of Knowledge and Eeverence, 
' we come to cxiv. This is a Spring poem, and strikes the 
key-note of the remainder of this spiritual history. The 
summer of former happiness is over and gone ; the winter 
of sadness and mourning is past; life rewakens in the 
world, and the glorious summer lies before. During the 
winter the heart dwelt regretfully upon the Summer that 
was gone ; in the Spring the Summer to come fills the 
heart. Eegret is dead, or has changed to hope. The joys 
of the new Summer are akin to those of the old, and indeed 
the glories of the new are the fruit of the seed of the old. 



208 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

Because the "bloom of the past died down to seed, therefore 
the bloom of the future is possible. Death is the seed of 
immortality. And the regret for the past is the same as 
the hope for the future, for they are both forms of love. 
Eegret is dead, and hope is born ; but the love which is 
both is unchanged. Indeed the regret does not die ; it 
only changes. 

" And in my breast 

Spring wakens too, and my regret 

Becomes an April violet, 
And buds and blossoms like tbe rest." (cxlv.) 

And so a grief can bloom, and the fruit that follows is the 
noblest that life can bear. 

Love is the whole burden of In Memoriam ; in the first 
part love as grief and regret ; in this last part, love as hope 
and joy. The dead who set in the west, have risen again 
in the east, and so love faces about and looks forward 
instead of backward, and the road that leads to reunion 
lies under the sunshine of day arid through the loves and 
smiles of living men. 

" Yet less of sorrow lives in me„ 

For days of bappy commune dead ; 
Less yearning for tbe friendship fled, 
Tban some strong bond wbicb is to be." (cxv.) 



IN MEMORIAM. 209 

The dead friend set as the evening star, and love darkened 
into grief; he rises as the morning star, and love brightens 
into hope. The star is the same ; the love is the same. 

" Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name 
For what is one, the first, the last, 
Thou, like my present and my past, 
Thy place is changed ; thou art the same." (cxx.) 

With the new birth of hope, faith revives. The first 

impulse of grief had been to say " The stars run blindly — 

a web is wov'n across the sky," and though she had battle'd 

with the fear, yet the shadow of doubt hung heavy upon 

her ; but the tone of reviving hope is altogether different ; 

she says, 

" The songs, the stirring air, 

The life re-orient out of dust, 

Cry through the sense to hearten trust 

In that which made the world so fair." (cxv.) 

With hope and faith come the thoughts of preparation and 



" Oh days and hours, your work is this, 
To hold me from my proper place, 
A little while from his embrace, 
For fuller gain of after bliss." (cxvi.) 

Grief is always self-centred, and more or less apt to be 

narrow and selfish ; noble and happy love is expansive, 

p 



~ 



- ■ _ - _ 



_- . 



- 
z. - - 

_ 

- Li 

- _ : ZZZ~-Z- -'- ~", ' ' ' - 

- 






IN MEMORIAM. 211 

" A warmth within the breast would melt 
The freezing reason's colder part, 
And like a man in wrath, the heart 
Stood up and answered ' I have felt.' " (cxxiii.) 

Gradually, as faith, and love find out and rest upon God, 
and as hope widens from the personal to the universal, 
the dead friend, also, seems to blend with both. 

" Strange friend, past, present, and to be ; 
Loved deeplier, darklier understood ; 
Behold, I dream a dream of good, 
And mingle all the world with thee." (cxxviii.) 
And, again, 

" Thy voice is on the rolling air ; 
I hear thee where the waters run ; 
Thou standest in the rising sun, 
And in the setting thou art fair." (cxxix.) 

But yet the love in no wise loses its reality and its person- 
ality : 

" What art thou then ? I cannot guess ; 
But though I seem in star and flower 
To feel thee some diffusive power, 
I do not therefore love thee less : 

" My love involves the love before ; 
My love is vaster passion now ; 
Though mixed with God and Nature thou 
I seem to love thee more and more." (cxxix.) 



212 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

The "dear dead friend has become, to him who on earth 
loves him, one with Nature and with God, humanizing 
them, yet not losing his own personality, but in that 
personality tender and near as ever, rising to the divine 
and pervading the universal. Seen in all things, felt at 
all moments, he makes all things and all moments dear and 
holy by his presence. 

I think that if any one were to read cxxvm. and cxxix. 
for the first time, out of connexion with the rest of 
In Memoriam, it is very probable that he would suppose 
them to be addressed to Christ. I think, too, that every 
one will feel that with a few unimportant alterations, they 
would make beautiful hymns to God. Yet I think that 
few will deny their exquisite appropriateness in their 
present place and for their present use. How is this ? 
How can the same words be rightly addressed to the dead 
friend, to Christ and to God ? The reason is found in 
that truth of which the Incarnation is the expression. 
Christ is Ideal Man and the express image of the Father's 
Person. He is the one Christ, and in so being, is, at the 
same time, Ideal Man and the express image of God. 
Therefore whatever feelings are appropriate towards God 
are appropriate towards Him ; whatever regard is due to 
ideal humanity is due to Him. Indeed the highest conception 



ilV MEMORIAM. 213 

of which we are capable is the conception of Ideal Man ; 
and therefore when God desires us to apprehend Him to 
the limit of our powers, He takes flesh and dwells amongst 
us. All unworthy conceptions of God are such as picture 
Him in some respects lower than perfect man. Our highest 
possible conception of Him is realized in the person of 
Christ, who is Ideal Man. This is that mystic identity of 
the Divine and the Human Natures of which I have else- 
where spoken, arid in the non-apprehension of which the 
Christ of mere theology is made so unreal a being. 

But now it is easy to see how these same hymns can be 
addressed to God, to Christ, and to the dead friend. The 
dead friend has become idealized and spiritualized. Un- 
seen, like God ; all-pervading, like God ; shorn of imper- 
fection and weakness, of ignorance and changeableness ; 
the goal and the model of all high aspiration ; known in 
character, but unknown in mode of being, he has become 
divine and mixed with God. The human nature has 
entered upon what seem to us divine conditions of being, 
and the spirit of the living man communes with the spirit 
of his dead friend as with God. 

This is necessarily the end of the poem. That spiritual 
history which began in loss and grief and doubt, has 
reached its consummation in hope and joy and the beatific 



214 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

vision. A fragrance of intense spiritual happiness, that is 
the highest development of love for the dead, haunts the 
end of the poem. This happiness can come for moments 
even while grief is at the full, so that the heart breaks and 
exults at the same instant. "When the joy has become 
perennial the history is completed. 



( 215 ) 



CHAPTER IX. 

PHILOSOPHICAL P OEMS-contmned. 



In JHtttTOrtam. Verbal Commentary. 



Distinct from the difficulty of fully grasping the great 
thoughts of the author — a difficulty common to the study 
of In Memoriam and every other work of power — there are 
thought to be some peculiar difficulties about the study of 
this poem, arising from the obscure or highly symbolical 
character of much of its language. I suppose the difficulty 
is somewhat real. Some of the language is obscure ; much 
of the language is highly symbolical. The following chap- 
ter is an attempt to clear some of the obscurity, to inter- 
pret some of the symbolism. 

I must ask the patience of each of my readers in case I 
should, in some or in many instances, have stopped to 
explain what is perfectly clear to him. While endeavour- 



216 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

ing to touch upon all passages that might be called obscure, 
I have tried to avoid such explanations as no thoughtful 
person would find needful. In Memoriam is not the book 
for unreflecting readers at all. But minds differ. What is 
perfectly clear to one may fail to strike another ; and the 
obscurities, real or supposed, of the poem have driven off 
many readers, and are the subject of complaint from many 
others. So I have felt it right to make this verbal com- 
mentary somewhat full. 

In determining what passages needed comment, I have 
called in the help of several intelligent friends. The agree- 
ments and the dissonances of their lists of passages were 
very instructive. I venture to hope that by the collation 
of these lists and my own best care, I have attained to 
something like an exhaustive exhibition of the verbal 
obscurities of the poem. Whether I have done much 
towards the elucidation of these obscurities is another 
matter. But here also I hope. In some few cases I have 
marked the obscurity without suggesting any explanation. 
The reason for this is the one that will first come into the 
reader's mind. I hope that by thus publishing my needs 
I may create a chance of getting them supplied. 

For the sake of brevity, I have thrown this chapter into 
the form of notes. 



IN MEMORIAM. 217 



Dedication. 



1 line 1. Probably Christ. But there are passages below that 
look more like an address to the impersonal love of 
God. 

„ 2 ,, 4. The resurrection of Christ, perhaps. But, perhaps, 
rather that Divine Love will conquer death, also. 
The " skull " is the symbol of Death. 

„ 5 „ 1. " Systems " of doctrine and belief. 

„ 6 „ 3. The " it " is doubtful. Probably "knowledge." 

„ 7 „ 4. "As before." "In the infancy of mankind," when 
"mind" and <; soul," though each small, were, accord- 
ing to the implication of the poem, in balance and 
harmony. This is the most obvious interpretation. 
I doubt if it be the poet's meaning. It assumes more 
than he is wont to assume. 

Canto. Verse. Line. 

I. 1 1. "Him." Longfellow has this thought in his " Ladder 

of St. Augustine." But I think that poem was pub- 
lished after In Memoriam. 

2 4. " Interest." Eesult, fruit. 

3 4. The two clauses of the line are probably equivalent. 

Allusion to ancient funeral ceremonies. 

II. 4 3, 4. *' Seem to lose my own personality and become part 

of thee." 

III. 2 2, 3, 4. The general drift of these lines is, of course, ma- 

nifest. The exact force of the expressions used I do 
not see. 

IV. 3 3, 4. Water may be reduced to a temperature considerably 
freezing point, without its turning to ice, if it 





4 


2. 


V. 


3 


1. 


VIII. 


5 


3. 


IX. 


4 


I. 




4 


2. 



218 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

Canto. Verse. Line 

be kept quite still. The least motion will cause it to 
instantly freeze. In the act of freezing, water ex- 
pands, and the containing vessel will, so, oftentimes 
be broken. The breaking is often ascribed to the 
thaw; it is really the work of the frost; the thaw 
only makes it manifest. The use of the image in the 
poem is clear. 

I do not see the force of " below." 

" Weeds " = " mourning garments." 

" The general gift of poesy, " not this particular poem, 
of course. 

Ambiguous. 

" Let no wind come from before the ship's course," as 
this would hinder its progress. 

X. 4 3, 4. The chancel of a church. Villagers. Sacrament 

cup, and sacramental wine. 
5 1. "With thee." The ship. As it would be if the ship 
were wrecked. 

XI. 2 1. The hill on which the old church of Clevedon 

stands. (See, also, "A few days with the Poet 
Laureate. ") 
3 1. The plain of South Wales, across the Severn. 
XII. 1 3. "Knit below." The carrier-pigeon has its message 
fastened (knit) beneath its wings. But bines 1 and 
2 scarcely seem to suggest a cam'er-pigeon. 
4. " Wild " = rapid. 
3 4. The " marge " of what ? I do not see. He has been 
crossing the ocean, and is not represented to have 
reached any land. 



IN MEMORIAM. 



219 



Canto. 
XV. 



XVII. 



xvm. 3 



XIX. 



XXI. 



XXII. 
XXIII. 



2. A gale from the west. 

3. Close of Autumn. 

3. « ; Wildly dashed " is hold. 

2. " Thy." The ship, as in XIV. 

2. "It is not so." That the previous picture of quiet 
is not true. 

The remainder of the canto wants carefully realiz- 
ing, it is easy then. 

2. "When out on the ocean, you seem to he in a circular 
space bounded on all sides hy the sky. Hence, in a 
voyage, a ship seems to pass through many such 
" circles of the bounding sky." 

3, 4. This is vague. 

1. " Pure hands." This seems to imply something 
special about the funeral. I do not know who 
were the pall-bearers. 

Arthur Hallam died at Vienna, and was brought 
by sea to Clevedon on the banks of the Severn. 
This I have told more fully elsewhere. For the 
rest of the canto, see " A few days with the Poet 
Laureate." 

Not literal. Arthur Hallam is buried in the vault 
of the church, not in the graveyard. 
See opening of In Memoriam Chapter. 

1. This line has been much discussed. The com- 
plaints made against it are that it is not pertinent 
to the main thought of the canto, and that the 
notion of a shadow keeping keys is a very halting 
metaphor. I am afraid I have not any defence to 



220 



A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 



Canto. Verse. Line. 



XXIV. 1 
3 



XXVI. 3 



XXVII. 3 

XXXIII. 3 

XXXIV. 2 

XXXV. 2 

3 

4 

XXXVI. 1 



XXXVII. 1 



offer upon these points; nevertheless, I like the 

line. 
3, 4. The spots on the sun. 
1, 2. The allusion is, of course, to a well-known optical 

effect of mist. 

3, 4. I cannot but think this rather far-fetched as a 

metaphor, seeing that it does not lie within the 
present experience of man to see, as a distant star 
or planet, a body he has once lived upon. 

4. I offer to the reader two paraphrases of this line : — 

(1.) " And that love only produces indifference 

to life." 
(2.) " If He see in present love, future indiffer- 
ence." I think the second is the more probable 
meaning. The doubt turns upon the force of " to be." 
4. This is rather obscure, whether want means careo 

or desidero. 
3, 4. The general, not the special, sacramental thought. 

1. It is thought that the Earth, viewed from without, 
would reflect a green colour. 

4 "I I do not see how this is an argument against the 
J continuance of love. 

2. Death. 

1, 2. Truths intuitive, or, at least, capable of being 
arrived at by the powers inherent in man. 

3. 4. Periphrasis for a sailor. 

1 1 Urania, muse of Astronomy, has so a heavenly 
1 ' character, and may be represented as dealing with 



IN MEMOEIAM. 



221 



Canto. Verse. Line. 

Spiritual matters. Melpomene, the tragic rnuse, 
inspires this poem. 
XXXVII. 6 2. "Clasped." Contained. 
XL. 2 2. "Bound." Connected. 

4 4. "The terrors of the land of death." A friend 
suggests that "forgotten fields" is the same 
thought as " forgetful shore." It is probable, but 
then I do not see the force of " forgotten." We 
may forget in death, but we do not forget death 
now. 
6 3. " Secular to be." The ages that are to come. 
XLII. 1 2. " Bloom " = blossom. The image is the folding of 
the leaves in a flower at night. 

2 3, 4. In the folded flower the colour is largely hidden. 

3 3. I do not see the force of " figured." 

XLIII. 1 3, 4. It seems doubtful whether this refers to a supposed 
previous state of being which now we forget, or 
nearly forget, or simply to the earlier periods of 
life which we forget in the later. Verse 2 rather 
favours the first notion, which is a very common 
one with the poets, and is touched upon in the 
" Two Voices." If the second is the meaning, 
then, "shut the doorways of the head" probably 
means the closing up of the bones of the skull after 
infancy. 

XLV. 3 4. The five years of their friendship. 

4 The five years was a short period for his friend's 
love to look back upon. He desires the retrospect 
to be over his whole life. 



A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 



Canto. Verse. Line. 

XLVI. 4 If it could be that the " faith as vague as all un- 

sweet " were true, the spirit would at least desire 
to know the moment of " remerging in the general 
soul," and so to bid farewell to those it had loved 
as a " separate whole." 

XLIX. 2 3, 4. I do not see the force of these images. 

LI. 3 This seems a weak verse, as far as expression is 

concerned. The force of " record " is example, only 
as the Great Example of men is not living before 
them, there is but the record of His example. So 
the thought is, " What keeps a spirit 'true to its 
ideal ? What example can do it ? What recorded 
example ? Not even the record of the sinless years 
that breathed beneath the Syrian blue. 
LIV. 5 There is an antithesis of thought here, that is Dot 

clearly brought out. It is thus : — I fall upon the 
great altar-stairs that slope up to God, and stretch 
hands of faith ; but because they are lame hands I 
do but grope and gather dust and chaff. Never- 
theless I hope there is more to gather, and " call 
to what I feel is Lord of all." 
LV. 3 I cannot but think that " wintry " and " fruitless " 

are discordant with the thought of the canto. 
Nature throws doubt upon the immortality of man 
by her prodigal waste of her own children. " But," 
the poet says, " shall man, so fair, with such 
splendid purpose in his eyes, who trusted God, 
spite of Nature's shriekings, who loved, who battled 
for the true, shall he share the fate of the rest ?" 



IN MEMOEIAM. 



Canto. Verse. Line. 

Into this putting, to import the words " wintry " 
and " fruitless," must be discordant, because they 
endorse the apparent teaching of Nature, which 
this putting is against. They do not stand in the 
same position as v. 4, 1. 3, 4, because that is intro- 
duced with the "though," is confessed to be in 
antagonism to the putting, the putting being made 
stronger by the fact that trust can override the 
antagonism. 
LVI. 2 1. "Your." Probably his sister. 
LXVI. See "A few days with the Poet Laureate." 

LX VII. 4 3. " Of my youth." A friend suggests that a long 
interval elapses between LVI. and LVIL, so that 
LVII. and the succeeding cantos were written a 
good many years after the death of Arthur Hallam. 
In Memoriam was not published until sixteen or 
seventeen years after the death. 

1 . • ■ Credit " = power. 

3. " Blindfold " = vague, unrealized. 

The effect of rain upou the rose and the daisy, I 
suppose. 
4 1, 2. " The sun might have risen all ablaze in a wind- 
less sky, &c, and it would have been all the same 
to me." It will help the realization of the whole 
canto to remember that Arthur Hallam died in the 
autumn, September 15. 
LXXIII. 3 3, 4. " The land of death, which is dark to us, 
must be beautiful if only from containing 
him." 



LXX. 



LXXI. 



224 



A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 



Canto. Verse. Li: 



LXXV. 1 

3 

4 

LXXIX. 4 

LXXXII. 1 



LXXXIV. 



4. I do not see the force of this. 

1, 2. Compare Job xxxviii. 4-7 with Genesis i. 1-3. 

4. " Hollow trunks." 

1. Not quite clear. 

1. The line is rendered clearer if " upon " be made 
" towards." 

2. " New Year "' = spring. 
Addressed to some friend who had also been a 
friend of Arthur Hallam. 

1. I do not see the force of " equal-poised control." 
1. " Hold apart " = " alone hold." 

Kernarkable as being one sustained sentence. 
4. ■) " Slowly breathing bare the round of space " = 
1. i " Clearing the whole sky-dome from clouds." 
4. The eyebrows of Michael Angelo met in the mid- 
dle, and formed nearly a straight line above his 
eyes. 
LXXXVII. 1 3, 4. The reference is to the mixture of joy and grief 
thought to be noticeable in the song of the night- 
ingale. 
3, 4. " Crimson-circled star "= evening star setting in 

the crimson sunset. " Father " = sun. 
4. " Honeyed hours " = bees, I suppose. 
4. A friend says that the blue-bird alone answers to 
the description, but that it is peculiar to North 
America. 
3, 4. Will-o'-the-wisp. 
1. " Mother town " = capital =metro polis. 
See previous chapter. 



LXXXV. 



LXXXVI. 



LXXXVIII. 12 



XC. 



XCVII. 
XCVII. 

on. 



IN MEMORIAM. 



225 



Canto. Verse. Line. 



CVI. 



CVII. 



CXIV. 



CXVI. 



cxx. 

CXXI. 



CXXIII. 



Arthur Hallam was born February 1. 

4. I do not know what "iron horns" means. 

This canto may be paraphrased thus : — "I will not 
shun intercourse with men, lest I lose the power of 
sympathy. Faith that is barren is useless. No 
less so is vacant yearning, however mighty it may 
be. For though it should reach to the heavens, it 
can find but an image of myself, though engaged 
in the avocations of heaven. Human conception, 
however far-reaching, can grasp nothing higher 
than man. So though my yearning reach down to 
death, it can find only the image of man. There- 
fore the true fruit of faith and yearning is action. 
Herein lies true wisdom which is the fruit of 
sorrow." 

2. " Burgeons " = bursts forth into life. "Quick " = 
quickset. 

1. Hour-glass. 

2. Sundial. 

3. Clock. 

4. Apparent daily path of the sun. 

The identity of the evening and the morning star. 
41 



Compare III., verse 2. 

3. Compare LXXXVIL, verse 3. 

2. " Our ghastliest doubt." Doubts about whom 

would be our ghastliest doubts. 
3, 4. The allusion is to the wearing away of continents, 

as told of in the geologic record. 

Q 



226 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

; Canto. ^ Verse. Line. 

CXXV. 1 4. "Couriers' 

3 1 " Sentinel " = faith. 



[ JEpitlialamion. 
On the marriage of the poet's sister. Probably not the 
one who was formerly betrothed to Arthur Hallam. 

; 13 2. On the dead buried beneath the chancel floor. 
20 2. " Whiter "= more favourable. 

32 3, 4. 1 A favourite thought of our poet's. See also 

33 JMaud. 

" So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man, 
He now is first, but is he the last ? Is he not too base ?" 

And also In Memoriam, CII. 

" And one would chant the history 
Of that great race, which is to be." 

And again, cxvn. 

" The herald of a higher race." 

g^I think it is best that I leave the reader to make what 
he can of these passages. 



( 227 >• 



CHAPTEE X. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

Our work is virtually finished. There are still several 
groups of poems to set down, but upon none of them do I 
propose to dwell. The groups are as follows : — 



Poems to Individuals. 
To — (Page 13). 
To J. M. K. 
To J. S. 
To — (350). 
To E. L. 
To the Queen. 

To Kev. F. D. Maurice (Maud). 
To Wife (Enoch Arden). 

Laureate Poems. 

Ode on the Death of the Duke 
of Wellington '(Maud). 

The Charge of the Light Bri- 
gade (Maud). 



Laureate Poems — cont. 
Alexandra (Enoch Arden). 
Dedication to Prince Albert 
(Idylls). 

Biddies. 
The Day Dream. 
The Voyage. 
The Flower. 
The Islet. 

Trifles. 
The Blackbird. 
The Goose. 
Audley Court. 



228 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

Trifles — continued. Unclasaifiable Poems. 

Walking to the Mail. Ode to Memory. 

Amphion. Ode on the Death of the Old 
Will Waterproofs Monologue. Year. 

The Sailor Boy. The Daisy. 
The Kinglet. Experiments. 

Of the Poems to Individuals, those to — (page 13), to 
J. M. K, to E. L., to the Queen, to the Bev. F. D. Maurice, 
and the Dedication, are poems to individuals simply. In 
one or two of them there is some bold strong drawing, 
not least so in the earliest of them, on page 13. The 
satire in the sonnet to J. M. K. is coarse, as coarse as the 
kindred piece in the opening of " Sea Dreams." Moreover, 
the badness of bad pulpit ministrations is too obvious and 
hackneyed to be touched by a poet, except witb a master 
touch. The remaining two poems — those to J. S. and to 
— (page 350) — migbt have been grouped with the Philoso- 
phical Poems — the one on page 350 forming a small sub- 
group with Tlie Poet and The Poet's Mind, while that to 
J. S. would have paired with In Memoriam, to which, on a 
small scale, it bears a strong resemblance. 

The poem on page 350 is not a very pleasant one. Taken 
with The Flower, one expression in A Dedication, and the 
Experiment in Rendecasyllabics, it seems to imply that the 



M1SCELLANE0 US. 229 

poet is not altogether pleased with the world, or its treat- 
ment of him. Now it is true that, as compared with the 
popularity of certain poetasters of our time and of other 
times, Tennyson has met with but a limited amount of 
appreciation. Tennyson has slain his thousands, and 
Tupper his tens of thousands. But quality goes for 
something in an audience, as in all other things. For the 
poetasters — well ; they have their reward. A man who is 
to die with his generation may be permitted to enjoy life 
while it lasts. But if the recognition and worship that 
Tennyson has obtained be measured by that which has 
usually fallen to the lot of great poets during their life- 
time, then he is pre-eminently happy. Barely has a great 
poet been loved so widely and so deeply until the con- 
secration of death has fallen upon him. 

Nevertheless there is much justice in the anger that the 
poem on page 350 expresses. That wretched desire to 
pry into the private matters and the every-day life of men 
who have made themselves great by action or thought is 
the essential spirit of coarse vulgarity. If a man passes 
imbecile and useless through life, it is rightly esteemed 
an impertinence to seek to ascertain about his personal 
affairs more than he chooses himself to disclose. How 
much more is it an impertinence when the man thus spied 



230 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

upon is great and useful, a loyal servant to his generation ! 
Yet so says not the common practice of our age. 

" For now the Poet cannot die, 
Nor leave his music as of old, 
But round him, ere he scarce be cold, 
Begins the scandal and the cry : 

" ' Proclaim the faults he would not show : 
Break lock and seal : betray the trust : 
Keep nothing sacred : 'tis but just 
The many-headed beast should know.' " 

There is a plea offered for the practice, and it is this : — 
" Because this man is so great and so useful, therefore he 
is above all men interesting to us ; it is but natural, there- 
fore, that we should desire and seek to know him fully. 
It must be that in proportion to admiration and gratitude, 
will be the desire for intimate knowledge." This is true ; 
but to know a man's affairs is not to know the man. The 
man has become public, that is true ; but the man's affairs 
are private still. If it be said that this strong desire for 
intimate knowledge extends even to his affairs, the answer 
is that this, then, is one of those many desires of the foul- 
feeding human mind that have to be checked and denied. 
" But the man we may seek fully to know?" Surely, pro- 
viding, always, that in your efforts to know him better 



MISCELLANEOUS. 231 

you do not come to know him less. " No man is a hero to his 
valet-de-chainbre !" " So much the worse for the valet- 
de-chambre !" as some one has said. There are eyes that 
are only microscopic in their discernment of human cha- 
racter — they can see hut the smallnesses of a man. To such 
no man is a hero — their range of vision does not extend 
beyond a few of the markings on his skin. On the other 
hand, there are lineaments of the human character that 
are to be well seen only at a distance. If you get too near 
to them they vanish, not because they are not real, 
but because their whole contour is lost when the point of 
sight is brought into too close proximity. As you stood 
well off and admired those grand outlines, there were 
smaller blurs in the character which you could not see, 
and you thought the man altogether heroic. But as you 
come nearer, while the heroic lines are lost to your sight, 
the blurs come out into distinctness, and, if you are very 
unwise, you cry, " Lo, this man whom I thought altogether 
heroic, is not heroic at all, but altogether blurred and un- 
heroic." But you cry so, because you are \ery unwise ; 
the fault is yours, that you came too near, and thereby 
lost rather than gained the power of true vision. 

Is it so, then, that a great man must necessarily appear 
other than great to those who are intimately familiar 



232 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

with his life and character ? Not so, either. There is no 
need to fear the fullest intimacy with a truly great man ; 
it is in ^a//-intimacy that the danger lies, for this is just 
enough to make manifest the foibles of his character, and 
yet not enough for that full knowledge of his deeper nature 
by which the heroic lines would again be made manifest. 
It is half intimacy that is so dangerous to reverence. 
If I be unable to revere a man whom I fully know, then 
it is either because he is not truly reverable after all, 
or because I have not in me the power of perceiving 
and revering true greatness. Therefore if there be some 
living man, poet or otherwise, who stands to me half in 
the ideal world, in reverence for whom I find happiness 
and elevation, I shall, if I be wise, avoid the acquaintance 
of that man, should such and no more be possible to me ; 
but should his friendship, and familiar intercourse with him, 
be offered me, I shall accept it without fear. For so, if he be 
a true hero, I am the gainer; while if he be no true hero, 
but an idol, it is just and good that he should be cast 
down. 

By the same rule, they are among the worst enemies of 
human excellence, who, loving better the carrion of a 
murdered reputation than the incense of a fair and 
honoured name, make it their business to collect and to 



MISCELLANEOUS. 233 

vend mean and petty stories of men whom others delight 
to honour. 

The remaining poem of this group — that to J. S. — is, as 
I have implied, a kind of minor In Memoriam. It is not 
specially strong, perhaps, but it is wise with the wisdom 
of sorrow and sympathy, and full of high-toned thoughts. 
That is a beautiful image contained in the verse — 

" His memory long will live alone 
In all our hearts, as mournful light 
That broods above the fallen sun, 
And dwells in heaven half the night." 

The last verse seems to express as a settled belief what is 
only put as a question in In Memoriam. 

The resemblance between this poem and In Memoriam 
suggested to me the dainty pleasure of tracing such coin- 
cidences of thought and expression throughout the writings 
of the poet. I had thought of setting down a few of the 
results here, but I think it will be, on the whole, better to 
leave the matter as a mere suggestion. If any reader is 
pleased to take it up, he will like it better that the work 
should not have been partly done for him. 

Tennyson has not done much laureate duty. Of the 



234 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

laureate poems he has written, he has thought only the 
four I have named worth preserving. Two of these are 
veiy well known even beyond the circle of the poet's 
lovers. The Charge of the Light Brigade just uttered the 
national thrill at that mad, heroic deed. The Dedication of 
the Idylls to Prince Albert expressed the half-repentant 
honour which his death awakened in the nation's heart, 
and seemed to make, the grief of the widowed queen a 
national sentiment. A Welcome to Alexandra is a graceful 
trifle — a true laureate poem, having nothing for its subject, 
and successful in that it says that nothing poetically and 
well. But the greatest of the laureate poems is the " Ode 
on the Death of the Duke of Wellington." The writing 
of this was evidently no mere duty work ; it was a labour 
of love, the poem being written very rapidly (it was 
published within a few days of the Duke's death), and 
having all the rush of a genuine enthusiasm about it. Not 
many a hero has had his praises sung in a nobler ode. In 
this case, again, the poet was expressing a deep national 
feeling, and the sorrow was idealized by being linked to 
such worthy utterance. The portrayal of the character 
of the national hero, the sketch of his career, the public 
lessons that bis life dictates, the private example that his 
character affords, the great future in store for him — these, 



MISCELLANE OuS. 235 

intermingled with expressions of national sorrow, form the 
theme of the poem. Of that passage beginning — 

" This is he that far away, 
Against the myriads of Assaye, 
Clashed with his fiery few and won," 

and ending— 

"And down we swept and charged and overthrew," 

it is difficult to say whether it is more wonderfully con- 
densed or more wonderfully vivid. Then the jubilant, 
march dike movement of the couplet — ; 

" Not once or twice in our rough island story 
The path of duty was the way to glory," — 

leads up to the good hope — 

" Till in all lands, and through all human story, 
The path of duty be the way to glory ;" 

and, for him, to that other hope — 

" Uplifted high in heart and hope are we, 
Until we doubt not that for one so true, 
There must be other, nobler work to do 
Than when he fought at Waterloo, 
And victor he must ever be." 

I have named the next group Biddies, because in the case 



236 A STUDY OF TENNYSON. 

of each poem it is obvious that the meaning is intentionally 
hidden. Among the Philosophical Poems, there are some 
in which the meaning is clothed in allegory ; still in these 
there is no attempt to hide the meaning, beyond that slight 
concealment which an allegory always affords. But in the 
Middles it is otherwise — in these the meaning is designedly 
hidden, and, to be found, must be puzzled for. Far be it 
from me to attempt to thwart the intention of the poet, 
by offering a key to his Biddies. 

The Trifles I pass without comment, as also the unclassi- 
fiable poems, though the Ode on the Death of the Old Year 
is a poem to grow fond of. The Experiments are interest- 
ing. I suppose there are not many who liked Boadicea at 
the first reading, while there can be few whom, upon 
familiarity, certain bits of it, and also the metre, did not 
come to haunt. The fragment of Homer that closes the 
Enoch Arden volume is very beautiful and perfect, and, 
maybe, foreshadows some poem on a classic subject as the 
next happiness in store for us from our dear poet's hands. 



( 237 ) 



A FEW DATS WITH THE POET LAUREATE. 

In my heart of hearts, I do not feel that I have put a false 
title to this paper. It is true that I did not see the 
Laureate with my bodily eyes. I did not wish to see him. 
I should like to have had him for a companion, if that 
might have been ; but as that could not be, then no seeing 
him could have been equal to the companionship that I 
truly had. I can read In Memoriam — can distinctly see the 
man in it ; but I am not sure that I could truly and fully 
read his face, without much time and effort. So I shall 
speak still of my " days with the Poet Laureate." 

My friend, did you never hold converse with an absent 
dear one, with a dead loved one? Did you never feel 
your spirit taken hold of and led backward into the sad, 
happy, dreamy past, and forward into the future — the 
near future, if it be a living friend that is haunting you ; 



238 A FEW DATS WITH THE 

the not very distant future, if the silent companion be a 
dead friend ? Did you never feel yourself surrounded by 
an atmosphere of the spiritual presence, tinging every 
thought, colouring every impression, seeming to you like 
an indubitable, precious truth, underlying all the passing 
phantasies that men and women were calling facts ? If you 
have never felt this, you will not be able to understand 
my " days with the Poet Laureate ;" if you have felt it, be 
content and go with me for a little ; I was in good company. 

The days of pilgrimages are past. There are no more 
any sacred places ; no more any shrines ; no more any 
holy relics. The ground of Calvary is common earth ; we 
are past caring for the true cross, even if it could be found ; 
we have outgrown superstition. Ah, me, have we not 
nearly outgrown reverence? Is anything common that 
has served a holy purpose? Is anything profane that 
recalls a noble deed, or a worthy life. In truth we have 
outgrown sacraments. I should be willing to pray for the 
grace to know how to use, without abusing, the sacraments 
of life. . 

I have made a pilgrimage. I have come to the ground 
rendered for ever sacred by In Memoriam. The blazing 
day draws to its close, and on one spot of the Severn liquid 
heaven is poured through a door in the clouds upon the 



P OET LA UREA TE. 239 

face of the waters. Beyond lie the dim Cambrian hills, 
and the sheep bleat and graze upon the luscious pasture- 
lands near by. Who has not seen the like of this a thou- 
sand times ; yet to whom is it stale and flat ? It is by 
such ever-recurring, simple harmonies that Nature tunes 
the soul to her higher raptures. 

The village of Clevedon lies on the banks of the Severn, 
nearly opposite the beautiful Wye. It nestles in a hollow 
on the top of a hill, near to heaven, well into the bosom 
of the earth. Who would wish to get away from the loves, 
the sorrows, the sympathies of humanity? Only not to 
have these at a low level is the hope. The love, the 
sorrow, the sympathy of humanity at a high level, near to 
heaven, this is the true life. 

The new village has grown quite away from the old (of 
which little but the graveyard remains), and can be 
completely seen at a glance from the hill on which the 
old village stands — and herein these two are like life and 
death. From the vivid newness of the new, the old 
village, with its church, looks peaceful and inviting — and 
herein again these two are like life and death. 

I have the keys of the church ; there is no one with me. 
I pass through the simple graveyard, and enter. 



240 A FEW DATS WITH THE 

The first thing that my eye rests tip on is a tablet to the 
memory of two brothers, drowned together in a stream, the 
elder in attempting to save the younger. Brought together 
in a point, the two great facts of this strange life of ours — 
love and death, both so sad, both so beautiful. I think I 
should be willing to be the mourning father of those two 
boys. 

But it is another tablet I am in search of. It is not 
in the chancel, as I had expected, but in one arm of 
the transept, and there is not one' tablet only, there are 
several. 

In 1833 died Arthur; in 1837 Eleanor his sister; in 
1840 died his mother ; in 1850 died Henry Fitz Maurice 
his brother; and last of all, himself the only son of his 
father, Henry Hallam, our great and good historian. Is 
not this list a mournful story in itself — a whole family of 
our best obliterated from the face of the earth, and all, 
save the father, taken away before their time was ripe or 
the promise of their natures fulfilled. " Here with his 
wife and children rests Henry Hallam the historian." 
This is the sad summing up on the last tablet. 

In the centre of the cluster stands the stone I came to 
see. His short life and his noble character are sketched 
in a few words on the tablet — then the farewell. 



P OET LA UEEA TE. 241 

Vale dulcissime 

Vale dilectissime desideratissime 

Eequiescas in pace 

Pater ac mater hie posthac requiescamus tecum 

Usque ad tubam. 

This is the memorial of a life to which has been erected 
that greatest monument of human love, our poet's In 
Memoriam. As I sit and write, the stone in the church 
before me seems holy— a true shrine, in the light of that 
love and gratitude which I feel to our poet and his 
greatest poem. Whatever he failed to accomplish through 
the shortness of his life, Arthur Hallam lived not in vain, 
since from the marriage of those sweet souls came that 
blessed offspring — In Memoriam. 

No human work is the product of the worker alone, but 
of the worker and the influence by which he is affected. 
And so it comes to pass that In Memoriam is the joint 
offspring of the spirit of the poet and the spirit of his dead 
friend. Had not Arthur Hallam lived and loved and been 
loved there would have been no In Memoriam. 

" I hold it true whate'er befall, 
I feel it "when I suffer most, 
Tis better to have loved and lost, 
Than never to have loved at all." 



242 A FEW BATS WITH THE 

And this is why it is better. The souls once knit are not 
severed by death. Life might have severed them, death 
cannot ; and in after time the living friend is the represen- 
tative of both, and bears fruit for their joint natures. 
Throughout the whole poem, there is to be seen the recog- 
nition of this great and consoling truth. It almost seems 
to me that to have loved and lost is the holiest thing in 
life. 

I wander out on to the hill and look down once more to 
the sea, and then return to the church. I want that the 
whole scene shall weld itself into one memory in my mind, 
as it was in the poet's, when he wrote — 

" Sweeter seems 
To rest beneath the clover sod, 

That takes the sunshine and the rains, 

Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 
The chalice of the grapes of God ; 

" Than if with thee the roaring wells 
Should gulf him fathom deep in brine, 
And hands so often clasped in mine 
Should toss with tangle and with shells." 

I can fancy that the poet once stood on this Clevedon Hill, 
looking over the channel as the tide came up against the 



POET LA TIRE A TE. 243 

cliffs, and conceived that sad, beautiful little poem that 
always seems to me a part of In Memoriam. 

" Break, break, break, 
On thy cold gray stones, sea, 
And I would that my tongue could utter 
The thoughts that arise in me. 

" well for the fisherman's boy, . 
That he shouts with his sister at play ; 
O well for the sailor lad, 
That he sings in his boat on the bay. 

" And the stately ships ■■;• , 
To their haven under the hill ; 
But O for the touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still. 

"Break, b.eak, break, 
At the foot of thy crags, O cea ! 
But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
Will never come back to me." 

I imagine that a thousand people have read this poem, and 
thought it referred to some loved woman, real or imaginary 
and not to his dead friend. It is wonderful to see how ex- 
quisitely tender this affetcion was. It was no mere 
sympathy of intellectual tastes ; no partnership for mutual 
improvement ; it was full of emotion, strong, deep, per- 
vading the whole nature. I do not think it has been 



244 A FEW DATS WITH THE 

sufficiently recognized how often the friendship between 
men is of this character. David and Jonathan are no soli- 
tary instances. That line — 

" So dearest, now thy brows are cold," 

is full of nature, and has in it no tinge of effeminacy. The 
non-recognition of this fact has caused some things to be 
said about our great poem that are grievous, chiefly as 
revelations of the poverty of the natures of those who give 
utterance to them. 

I sit in the church as the evening passes on. The 
night- winds begin to rise ; the farther parts of the 
building become dim; a bat that has its home in the 
church flits across the tablet; the mystic solemnity of 
night steals over me, and the dead seem nearer than 
before. The tablet becomes indistinct, but I know how 
the letters stand, even as the poet remembered the linea- 
ments of his dead friend. And presently there shall fall 
upon the stone the sad light of the moon, and the letters 
shall be re-illumined, as if the ghost of the dead friend had 
returned to the earth. 

" When on my bed the moonlight falls, 
I know that in thy place of rest, 
By that broad water of the West, 
There comes a glory on the walls ; 



P OET LA UREA TE. 245 

" Tby marble bright in dark appears, 

As slowly steals a silver flame, 

Along the letters of tby name, 

And o'er tbe number of tby years. 

: " Tbe mystic glory swims away ; 

From off my bed the moonlight dies ; 
And closing eaves of wearied eyes, 
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray. 

" And then I know tbe mist is drawn, 
■ A lucid vale from coast to coast ; 

And in tbe dark church like a ghost 
Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn." 

I think I should have no terror of the ghost of the good 
man I had loved ; I think I should be thankful to receive 
any communication from him. Are not the dead loved 
ever near us? Should it be terrible for them to make 
their presence known ? Not to assume bodily form or 
semblance — that is but the phantom of the brain acting by 
the wondrous law of association — but to make themselves 
known by the same power by which spirit communicates 
with spirit where no bodies are. 

" No visual shade of some one lost, 

But be, the spirit himself may come, 
Where all the nerve of sense is numb, 
Spirit to Spirit Ghost to Ghost." 



t 



246 A FEW DAYS WITH THE 

I think I should be happier for such a communication 
from the man I had loved. 

" Descend and touch and enter, hear 

The wish too strong for words to name, 
That in this blindness of the frame, 
My ghost may feel that thine is near." 

The night has come and I prepare to leave the church. 
I pass out with awe and turn the key upon the dead. 
They and I are in different worlds that touch each other 
but slightly and but seldom, though in truth they lie so 
near together ; well is it for us that they touch each other 
sometimes. I pass out into the world of labour and sor 
row, of temptation and sin, of struggle and preparation 
and hope ; they lie clasped in the immutable for ever — 
seed sown to bear no uncertain fruit in the field of eternity. 
And the night winds sigh and sob, and the sea wave 
breaks on the crags below, and the solemn heavens are very 
still, and the church with its holy dead grows more and 
more indistinct as I pass down the hill, and I feel that life 
is very great and terrible, and the soul is quite alone, and 
I yearn towards the Father of the quick and the dead, that 
I may feel under me the everlasting arms, and know that 
I am not alone in the terror of existence. 



P OET LA UREA TE. 247 

"Old yew which graspest at the stones 
That name the underlying dead, 
Thy fibres net the dreamless head, 
Thy roots are wrapped about the bones." 

I think I must have found the identical yew-tree. It is 
near by, in a village churchyard, and is large and venerable 
beyond the common. I measured the stem, its girth is 
nearly eighteen feet. I think the poet must have wandered 
away to this village when he wrote the poem which com- 
mences with the verse I have quoted. 

The villagers say that the tree was planted when the 
church was built — a beautiful custom this of associating 
human events with natural objects. I would have nature 
brought more into our worship, or our worship carried 
more into nature. To rejoice in trees and flowers, sea and 
stream, is not worship, but it is a great help to worship ; 
and the old church and the old yew render each the other 
more venerable. 

The graves nestle close around the huge stem of the 
tree — its wide branches overshadowing their stillness. 
The church for the living, the graves for the dead, and the 
tree for both — and God's sun shines down upon them all. 
A true poet's Trinity in Unity — souls on earth, souls in 
heaven, nature all around, and God's love over all. 



248 A FEW DATS WITH THE 

There are few things more striking than the way in 
which a great poet appropriates to association with himself 
the natural objects that he touches upon. In the whole of 
In Memoriam there is but one reference to the Wye ; yet I 
do not think that any student of that poem can help feeling 
that the Wye is to him emphatically Tennyson's river. 
During these days that I have spent by it or upon it, he 
has been constantly with me — they have been truly " days 
with the Poet Laureate." Such association as this is more 
real and potent than an}^ historic association — it is a thing 
not of the memory but of the imagination and feeling. 
Both poet and object are gainers. The object has infused 
into it that soul which we so often fail to perceive, in 
nature ; and the poet becomes magnified and sanctified — is 
made the symbol and priest of that nature with which he 
has become identified. The poet for the most part deals 
with the concrete, the individual ; but never for the sake 
of the concrete, alwa) 7 s for the abstract and universal. He 
gains intensity by dealing with the concrete ; but he gains 
width and greatness whenever he can become associated, 
identified with nature, which is the bodyand manifestation 
of the great Abstract and Universal. 

And what a river it is, this wonderful Wye. The poet's 
river, at all times ; full of moods as the poet himself. Now 



P OET LA UREA TE. 249 

a brimming navigable stream, now with scarcely water 
enough to cover its bed ; here transparent as crystal, there 
opaque and secret; here calm and very smooth, there 
impetuous and noisy (only that noise is a very inappropriate 
name for such music) ; winding in and out, and backwards 
and forwards — at one or two points almost meeting itself 
again, yet never quite forgetting that its destiny is to 
reach the sea, even as the poet wanders and loiters in 
search of beauty, yet forgets not that his prime search is 
for truth. And then such banks, such a valley of unbroken 
beauty stretching almost from its source to its mouth! 
Hill upon hill, one exquisite curve growing out of another 
and melting again into a third ; bold cliffs precipitous and 
naked, slopes gentle and verdant or covered with the 
richest foliage ; bays of mimic grandeur and tiny tributaries 
without number, picturesque villages and venerable ruins, 
— beauties numberless and of endless variety, a river to 
*' make glad the heart of man " and to be "a joy for ever." 
But now it is touching to see in what mood the poet comes 
to this happy stream. 

" The Danube to the Severn gave 

The darkened heart that beat no more ; 
They laid him by the pleasant shore, 
And in the hearing of the wave." 



250 A FEW DATS WITH THE 

His friend has died suddenly in Vienna, and his body is 
being brought across the sea to be buried in the quiet 
church of Clevedon on the banks of the Severn. 

Through the earlier poems of In Memoriam we find him 
impatiently expecting the vessel that carries " lost Arthur's 
loved remains." 

The ship has arrived, and the sorrowing friend sings, 

" 'Tis well, 'tis something, we may stand, 
Where he in English earth is laid ; 
And from his ashes may be made 
The violets of his native land." 

He stays, as I imagine, but a short time at Clevedon, the 
place is too painful as yet ; but not to be too far away he 
crosses to the opposite shore. 

" There twice a day the Severn fills ; 
The salt sea water passes by, 
And hushes half the babbling Wye, 
And makes a silence in the hills." 

The river is full of little rapids down which the water 
falls with a "sweet inland murmur." It is one of the 
great charms of the river. As the tide comes up, the water 
deepens, and " half the babbling Wye " flows back and 
grows silent. The effect is very beautiful. The murmur 



P OET LA UREA TE. 251 

is exquisite ; the silence is tender, especially when, as with 
me now, it comes solemnly with the breaking day and falls 
holily npon the heart like the morning prayer of infancy. 
But the poet's thought is born of his grief; 

" The Wye is hushed, nor moved along, 
And hushed my deepest grief of all, 
When, rilled with tears that cannot fall, 
I brim with sorrow, drowning song." 

How beautiful an application, but how sad a one ! The 
poet is seldom joyous — tears are his portion more often 
than laughter, for he sees into the heart of the great grief 
of our mournful race, and himself bears the full share of 
the common burden. There is a sadness in all true 
thought, in all that comes from the best portion of our 
nature, for we toil and strive and attain not, and at best 
can but hope. By and by the hope shall become stronger, 
and the song of the human race shall become, as " In 
Memoriam " towards its close becomes, a triumphant chaunt 
of victory. 

The flow of the tide does not last long near the rapids. 
In about an hour comes the ebb, and the river again 
murmurs its sad, soothing, prayerful song. Thank God 
the intensity of speechless grief does not last long. The 
danger to some is that the ebb shall leave their hearts 



252 A FEW BAYS WITH THE 

utterly dry and voiceless, as if the descending tide should 
draw with it all the proper water of the AVye. Tears and 
prayers are the true ebb-flow of grief. 

" The tide flows down, the wave again 
Is vocal in its wooded walls; 
My deeper anguish also falls, 
And I can speak a little then." 

Some one has said that poetry is the language of dead 
passion. I suppose that this is over-stated ; but certain it 
is that the heart at its fullest has no utterance, and that 
only the ebb of deep emotion has much power of expres- 
sion. 

As I write, the river has taken upon it another mood ; a 
mist has come up with the tide and casts a veil over the 
whole scene, and the river steals along obscure and silent 
like a ghost, and the glorious old abbey of Tintern looms 
vaguely as out of its native mist of antiquity. But the 
mist like the flow of the tide will not last, and the clearer 
vision shall come with the ebb. 

I have climbed the Windcliff, and the wonderful 
panorama lies before me. In the distance stretches the 
Severn, and into it, its windings of incomparable beauty 
being finished, runs the silver Wye ; and it seems to me 



POET LA UREA TE. 253 



that these two rivers are symbols of the two men that 
have been in my thoughts these days. 

Through a great channel the Severn pours its many 
waters into the sea ; so is the poet many -voiced, speaking 
with a large utterance to all the world. The waters of 
the Severn flow down, in part, from the proper source of 
the river, but the full body of the stream is swollen by 
contributions from many another river, yet it is all called 
the Severn. So the true poet combines with the outflow of 
his own heart and mind the thoughts of many another 
mind which have flowed into and become incorporated with 
his. He gathers from all sources ; he is the resultant of 
all the streams and currents of our manifold human heart. 
Yet is he no crude conglomerate, no patchwork of other 
men's webs of thought ; these are but the warp and woof, 
yea but the fibre itself; the woven texture is his own 
handiwork, is the expression of his capacities alone. The 
waters of the many streams become united and assimilated 
in him, and find their way to the general ocean of human 
thought through his mouth. And as all the streams that 
combine to form the Severn have their common origin in 
the rains of heaven, so all the true inspirations of the poet 
must be heaven-fetched, and he is a devil's prophet whose 
inspirations come from any other source. 



254 A FEW DAYS WITH THE 

The Severn, at its grandest, is swollen by the tides of 
the ocean— waters from heaven and from earth meet in its 
bosom. The poet, at his grandest, is filled with the large 
reflux of human emotion — the resultant of the great, 
thoughts and feelings of heaven and earth is he. Inspired 
from above, in sympathy with his kind, he becomes a 
mediator between heaven and earth. 

And the Wye, to my fancy, stands for Arthur Hallam. 
Many streams pour water into the Severn, but none so 
much as this one ; many influences have gone to perfect 
the heart and mind of our poet, but none so potent as this 

one. 

" Since we deserved the name of friends, 
And thine effect so lives in me. 

" But he was rich where I was poor, 

And he supplied my want the more, 
As his unlikeness fitted mine. 

"Whatever way my days decline, 
I felt and feel, tho' left alone, 
His being working in mine own, 
The footsteps of his life in mine."' 

I dwell not upon this. "In Memoriam" is full of the 
recognition of this the prime result of the highest friend- 
ship. 



POET LA UEEA TE. 255 

The Wye has, of itself, no opening into the sea ; it flows 
into the Severn and becomes nameless. Yet it is not lost. 
Arthur Hallam found no utterance before the sea of men ; 
he died and became nameless before he reached the ocean ; 
no stream of thought is called by his name. Yet was he 
not lost. The Severn without the Wye were other, and 
less ; Tennyson without the influence of his friend were 
other, and, perhaps, less. And herein rivers are happier 
than men. Every river reaches the sea at last by its own 
mouth or another's ; but not every poet-soul finds utter- 
ance either immediately or mediately. But herein our 
dead poet was as happy as the Wye ; for an utterance has 
been given unto him through the mouth of another. Be- 
fore the eyes of the silent Intelligences he lives as no 
dumb poet, for utterance is not in words, and he whose 
spirit has gone abroad into the hearts of men is not dumb. 
The waters of the Wye commingle everywhere with the 
ocean — the spirit of Arthur Hallam shall commingle every- 
where with the thoughts of men. 

" S» here shall silence guard thy fame ; 
But somewhere out of human view, 
Whate'er thy hands are set to do, 
Is wrought with tumult of acclaim." 

My days with the Poet Laureate are over. I have finished 



256 A FEW DATS WITH THE POET LAUREATE 

my pilgrimage, I have traversed all the sacred ground, and 
have harvested a store of memories that shall last me my 
life through. Henceforth, Alfred Tennyson and his dead 
friend Arthur Hallam are more real to me than ever they 
were before, and In Memoriam has grown more full than 
ever of meaning. In one mystic bundle are tied together 
for me the greatest poet of our time, the richest poem, 
the noblest friendship, and the most beautiful river of our 
country. These in harmonious memory shall live in my 
heart as long as my heart is worthy to hold them ; and, all 
the time, the Wye shall pour its waters into the Severn, 
and the Severn shall roll down into the sea, and the moon 
shall shine upon the quiet church of Clevedon, and the 
tablet shall glimmer in the dim early mornings, and the 
love of men for our great poet and his greatest poem shall 
grow deeper, until they shall have learned once more that 
the true poet is the King of Men. 



London: printed et william clowes and sons, stamford street 
and charing cross. 






